


A New Frontier

by H3ctic



Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms, Titanfall (Video Games)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 15:04:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20780561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/H3ctic/pseuds/H3ctic
Summary: Jack Cooper died when his Titan BT-7274 destroyed the Arc, or so they thought. Instead, they found themselves thrust into a new war, for a new frontier. But this time they aren't fighting for the land and for rights, this time they're fighting for the entirety of humanity, with the Master Chief and his companion Cortana at their sides.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to ‘A new Frontier’! A crossover between Halo 4 and Titanfall 2, and my second ever story.  
So I explained a little in my other story about this one. There are a few Titanfall/Halo crossovers out there, but none were the one I wanted, so I decided to write it myself.  
I love both Halo and Titanfall, and thought they both had great campaigns. I also noted that the technological development in their respective universes was very similar, so it wouldn’t be completely crazy for one party finding all these things that shouldn’t exist.  
I wanted the stories to join, but I wanted them to be unique to each other still. I didn’t want them to be in a shared universe, because they each have such well-developed ones already. I wanted to expand upon them, not merge them.  
So without further ado, here’s Chapter 1! Enjoy!

Jack Cooper felt sick.

Even more so than when he’d been hopped up on sansufentanyl when the HEV crash landed. What felt like so long ago was really just a couple days prior.

“Pilot,” BT-7274 said, his voice echoing in Cooper’s mind.

“The injector back-blast has overloaded my critical internal systems,” BT continued, his voice catching and repeating like a broken record.

“BT!” the radio crackled, “Cooper! Respond!”

It was Sara Briggs; leader of the Marauder Corps.

“Attempting to restore ocular systems,” BT said, voice still stuttering and unstable.

“We’ve fired everything at the Fold Weapon – No effect on target!” Sara said, voice tense.

The inside of BT’s chassis blackened, before digital chirps sounded and the ocular systems booted up, bathing Cooper in red light, before it slowly shifted to reveal the ceiling.

“Ocular systems restore,” BT supplied, “Warning. Hostile hostile _HOSTILE _Titan detected,”

The large rotating barrel of a Predator Canon belonging to a Legion class Titan appeared from above him. The barrel lifted, the gun being moved out of the way for the hatch of its owner to open.

A man stepped from the open cockpit and fell, landing easily on his feet on the hood of BT, a loud thud echoing inside briefly.

“It’s your lucky day, hero,” Kuben Blisk said, voice calm, “I’m not going to kill you. I don’t work for free,” he explained, voice dark and deadly.

He took a breath and crouched.

“But…” he began, “you don’t get to kill me either,” he chuckled, somehow finding it amusing.

He reached for his left breast pocket and pulled out a card.

“Here,” he said, dropping the card down onto BT’s chassis, “You earnt this eh?”

The card read ‘Apex Predators’.

His slapped the card down, the echo coming nearly a second before Cooper saw him do it. A testament to how damaged BT was at the moment.

“That Vanguard class Titan is still in there!” came the voice of General Marder from the hacked voice channel of the radio.

“Not my problem, Marder,” Blisk said, relaxed, “Should have put it in my contract. I’ve got other people with money to see,”

“What are you doing?” Marder asked as Blisk allowed his Titan to pick him up and return him to the cockpit.

“What do you think you are doing?!” he repeated, voice commanding, as Blisk walked out of sight.

Text lit up on the Ocular Screen in front of Cooper.

INITIATING EMERGENCY RESTART

REROUTING AUXILARY POWER

AUX POWER ONLINE

“Cooper,” BT spoke, his voice clearer, “I require your assistance. My auto-navigation systems are offline,” he said quickly.

“Get me into that injector assembly. We must do this together,”

VALIDATING NEURAL LINK

SUCCESS

MOTION LINK RESTORED

Control returned to Cooper, and with an incredible effort, he began pushing BT and himself upwards.

REBOOTING COM ARRAY

“BT! Cooper!” Sara yelled through the radio, “Our ground teams can’t make it there in time! You’ve got to find a way to destroy the Fold Weapon from the inside! There’s no other way!”

Cooper slowly maneuvered the hulking mass of combined Titan and Pilot towards the opened injector.

“Commander Briggs,” BT began, “I believe I have a solution,” he told her, “In its exposed state, my reactor core may be able to destabilize the Ark at the centre of the Fold Weapon,”

Cooper guided BT’s hands onto the injector.

“What are you saying?” Sara asked.

“We can blow it up,” BT told her, his voice resolute.

“I… I understand. God speed you two. Briggs out,” Sara responded, her voice quiet.

BT climbed into the injector and it began to rise, lifting them into the assembly and to the barrel of the gigantic coil-gun.

REROUTING LINK OS V18.723X

CONNECTION VERIFIED

UPLOADING…

The colossal electromagnets activated, lifting BT into suspension in the middle of the barrel.

“It’s been an honour BT,” Cooper said, his first words since waking.

“Likewise Cooper,”

The lights lining the barrel lit up one by one, slowly approaching their suspended form.

The final light activated, and they were flung forward, accelerated to an incredible rate towards the Ark.

Then everything went white.

* * *

“What were those things?” the Master Chief asked.

“Some kind of advanced defence AIs,” answered his faithful companion, the AI Cortana, “Related to the sentinels, I’m guessing,” she continued, “but it’s hard to say without a closer look,”

Her voice implied she didn’t exactly want to be closer.

“C’mon, let’s figure out where that transit system dumped us,” she continued after a moment.

Chief, with Cortana in tow, had arrived in a hallway, styled the same way as the temple they had just been in before.

He walked carefully through the hallway, glancing at the short podiums that appeared on both sides every few metres.

As he approached the end of the hall, guided by the twin, glowing lines in the centre, a wall split vertically, and shifted to the sides.

A door, he decided.

The door opened, and revealed the planet.

Or the inside of it, at least.

Two purple beams of light, originating from the ‘surface’ 90 degrees to either side of him and opposite each other, met in the middle, contacting with a gigantic, translucent-purple sphere, with a relatively smaller, but still incredibly large sphere within.

Large bars of lights stretched to either side from the platform he was on, reaching all the way around the inside of the planet to the start point of each beam, then continued around the back until it disappeared behind the orbs in a complete circle of the planet’s circumfrance.

Master Chief walked up a ramp towards what appeared to be a central viewing platform.

There was a podium in the centre of the platform, with identical circular patterns leading to each side. Perhaps they were for more of those portals to reach each of the beams origins.

“Put me in the console,” Cortana said.

Chief obliged, extracting the data chip from the back of his helmet and pushing it into a receiving slot on the podium.

“Where’s _Infinity_?” Chief asked her.

After all, this is where her signal had been origination from.

“This is Requiem’s core alright, but _Infinity_ is definitely not here,” Cortana stated, a holographic image of herself appearing from the console.

A holographic interface appeared in front of Cortana, likely more for Chief’s benefit than her own.

“That satellite in the centre is amplifying the ship’s signal like a relay,” Cortana explained.

“Maybe we can use it to respond,” Chief offered.

“Perhaps,” Cortana responded, before returning to her interface.

“Those beams coming off it,” she began, gesturing at them, “are creating the interference we’ve been experiencing. We’d have to take them out to contact _Infinity_,”

Good. A game plan.

Chief hated being in the dark, but now they had a goal, and a means to achieve it.

“Can you get us there?” he asked her.

To his left, up floated two pieces of metal. Between them shot bolts of electricity, before a dark portal appeared between them, just like the one previous.

“Opening a gate to the first beam pylon. Pull me and let’s go,” she instructed.

Chief followed, taking the data chip and returning it to his helmet.

A familiar wave of cold hit his neck, but vanished into the background within moments.

He dropped down onto the corresponding walkway, and carefully stepped into the gate.

A flash of light later, and he found himself in a hallway somewhat similar to the one he had been in a minute previous.

“This is the first pylon?” he asked into his helmet.

“Negative,” Cortana answered him, “This is as close as I could get us. Hope you don’t mind hoofing it a little,” she told him with her usually playfulness.

Chief began moving.

The hallway quickly disappeared into a small, but seemingly well-trodden cave.

At the end of the small incline he could see the first beam, his current objective.

He stepped out of the cave.

“Contacts!” Cortana warned him.

His gun was already up.

Small, dog-like creatures scurried away from his approach. Climbing the sheer cliffs around him to escape.

He slowly, warily lowered his weapon. An MA5D standard issue Assault Rifle.

He continued and took a right turn when faced with a sudden drop, now with strange, haunting whistles following him.

Chief approached a small clearing, more structures visible behind it.

In the centre stood one of the dog creatures, this one with a great deal of spikes protruding from its back, while the others he had seen were smooth.

It lifted its head and roared, before looking back at Chief.

His instincts screamed, and he dodged left, just as the beast opened fire, yellow bolts flying from its head.

He took cover behind a rock and returned fire once the creature finished its burst.

The full metal jacket armour piercing 7.62’s staggered it, but despite the long burst Chief put into it, did not kill it.

Chief shouldered the weapon, taking note of the 25 rounds still remaining as he replaced the weapon with his M6H Magnum.

With incredible precision, Chief put a single 12.7x40mm High Explosive round into the creatures head.

The head shattered, and the creature fell apart.

He peaked out from the rock and quickly and efficiently disposed of one more of the spike-backed, and five of the smooth-backed enemies.

Crawlers, Cortana helpfully supplied to his HUD. The spiked ones were ‘Alpha’s.

He approached the body of the first one he had killed.

Its body had fallen apart completely, leaving only small pieces of shattered armour.

And something else; its weapon.

Whatever it was, it fired _fast_. Nearly 900 rounds per minute, by Cortana’s calculations.

She highlighted it on his HUD, though he would have seen it regardless. Its angular silhouette and glowing lines making it stand out from the smoother and dark pieces of destroyed armour.

He holstered his Assault Rifle and picked up the weapon, designated the ‘Suppressor’.

He lifted it, and to his surprise, pieces of the device lifted themselves off of it, floating a few centimetres away from where they connected, before they slowly lowered, settling back in.

Chief walked through the clearing towards the structure, where he found a floating button in front of a large gap.

Cortana highlighted it, so he stepped up and pressed it.

The top of it lowered over the green button, and it vanished with a flash.

Across the gap spread a light bridge that Chief crossed.

“Those weren’t the same things we saw in the Terminus,” he mused aloud.

“Similar cortical footprint as the tower AIs,” Cortana informed him, “They’re connected, all right,”

He continued along the path, then three things happened in an instant.

His motion tracker flared.

“Look out!” Cortana warned.

And a large creature, identical to the ones from the Terminus, fell from the sky on top of him.

Taller than he, with thin legs and a large, nearly triangular torso, it looked as though it had been built for war.

Chief managed to push the thing’s weapon away from him before it could fire, but it still pinned him.

It lent down, its armoured mask splitting down the middle to reveal a very humanoid, if blue and glowing, skull that proceeded to screech at him.

He took the opportunity handed to him and punched the exposed skull, stunning it for long enough for him to kick it off.

Then it simply folded in on itself, and vanished into a portal of its own creation.

“Well he’s just a ray of sunshine, isn’t he?” Cortana quipped, voice notably anxious, “From that peak under the hood, I’d say these constructs must be mimetic in nature,” she explained.

He continued around another corner, and standing on small outcroppings stood three tall creatures, which all teleported away as soon as they saw him.

“More of them?” Chief asked rhetorically.

“Similar phasing activity at the edge of our sensor range,” Cortana warned him, “We’re about to get busy,”

He walked the curved path to another clearing, and like before, with a structure behind it.

Two larges pillars rose from the floor near the end of the clearing, flanking a stone outcropping that one of the tall creatures phased onto.

It bent down and its back split open, and from it launched a new foe.

It had a small central head, with two circular ‘wings’ to each side.

Chief disregarded it for the time being. The tall one was the priority.

He began firing the Suppressor, the hardlight rounds filling the air. The gun kicked heavily, he noted. It would need to be used in CQB or in short bursts to be effective.

The creature recoiled, before a translucent blue barrier appeared in front of it, courtesy of its summon.

Chief set his eyes on the flying enemy, its combat priority having raised significantly, and opened fire, taking the opportunity left by the surprised creatures to close the gap.

He opened fire again, once again aiming for the flying enemy, before being forced to take cover as its creator opened fire.

The flyer flashed, the blue lights slowly strobing and it folded itself, becoming a smaller target as it began to flee.

Not on his watch.

He drew his Magnum and fired in a single, fluid motion.

The flyer let out a mechanical scream, and exploded, as the 50 calibre, explosive round collided with it at 550 metres per second.

Suddenly, over the walls poured two squadrons of Crawlers, an Alpha for each group.

They opened fire immediately, forcing him backwards into better cover.

He took a short moment to reload the Suppressor. Pressing a button within the trigger guard to eject the cylindrical magazine, which he then replaced with one he had scavenged from the first two Alpha Crawlers.

He peeked out from cover with his Magnum drawn and began taking precise shots at the heads of the Crawlers, each successful hit rewarding him with a small explosion.

Chief whittled down they’re forces to two basic Crawlers before the tall one reached him.

He drew his Suppressor once more, and opened fire, the high RPM staggering it.

With a flash of light, its shields broke.

It exposed its skull like earlier, and Chief, going on his instincts, lifted his Magnum, and put a bullet in it.

The explosive round shredded it from the inside, and it immediately began to disintegrate, falling apart into golden polygons.

With the main threat dealt with, he returned his attention to the remaining Crawlers.

Deciding to conserve his human ammunition, he dispatched them with the Suppressor, each of them only capable of a fraction of a second of sustained fire before they died.

With the battle complete, Cortana spoke up.

“I’ve discovered something interesting about our new friends,” she told him, “When the big ones explode, that momentary flash we see is actually a data purge,”

“Can you tap into it?” He asked her.

“So far, I’ve pulled multiple strings referring to the big ones as ‘Promethean Knights’. Beyond that, though, things become a bit dense,”

The ‘Knight’ had dropped its weapon.

He approached it, and Cortana gave him a small infographic on it.

A ‘Light Rifle’. Three shot burst from the hip and shoulder, which changed to a singular beam when using the optics attached. Excellent armour penetration.

Chief returned the Magnum to its thigh holster and picked up the new weapon, replacing his Assault Rifle for it.

He was much more likely to find ammunition for these than he was his MA5.

Like the Suppressor, the Light Rifle separated into multiple floating parts, before it reassembled itself in his hands.

Cortana put a waypoint on his HUD, and he followed it to a door, one that opened when he approached, revealing a long armoured hallway, with weapon caches along the path.

He stopped at one.

It contained two Suppressors, the ammo of which he took, and two ‘Boltshot’s, a Promethean pistol with a charge attack similar to a shotgun. Not worthwhile.

In the second, two more Suppressors, and two spiked cubes.

Cortana identified it as a ‘Pulse Grenade’. Something of an area denial weapon. Useful.

Chief took both, and locked them to his belt magnetically.

He stepped through another door and out of the hallway, only to be immediately confronted with three Knights.

The middle one roared at him, but then they all looked away.

They each seemed to stare at an empty patch of space, before collectively they phased away.

“Chief!” Cortana yelled, “Energy surge! Right where they were looking! Get to cover!”

Without hesitation, he dived behind a rock.

The ground beneath him shook, and a flash of pure white light streamed over the rock, accompanied with a cacophonous boom.

Chief carefully looked over the rock, and what he saw, was truly unexpected.

* * *

Jack Cooper woke up.

Something truly unexpected.

“Chassis strength back at 100%. All major systems running at peak efficiency. Particle Wall inoperable. Enabling Vortex Shield as substitute,” came the voice of his robotic companion.

“BT? What happened?” He asked as he brought them to a standing position.

“Unknown. Records suggest we collided with the Ark as planned. However, such an action should have destroyed us both,”

Finally to his feet, Copper, within BT looked to his surroundings.

Jack’s jaw dropped.

“Where… Where the hell are we BT?” he asked in disbelief.

“We appear to be on the underside of a planet’s crust,” observed the every calm AI, “However, such a feat has never been accomplished, and would not be possible to accomplish for many centuries by today’s technology,”

Jack looked around again.

It was… Impossible. Incredible. Awe-inspiring. And many other adjectives.

“Pilot. Movement detected behind us,” BT warned.

Cooper spun them, pointing the large 40mm canon at the location indicated by his partner.

It was a tall, heavily armoured figure.

Thick metal armour covered the man from head to toe, with a helmet similar to that of Pulse Blade designated Pilots, only with a much larger orange visor.

The figure was positioned behind a rock, pointing a strange, angular, glowing weapon at them.

“BT; Loudspeakers,”

“Affirmative,”

“Identify yourself,” he told the figure.

* * *

Master Chief faced the gigantic, heavily armed robot anxiously.

“Chief? I think you should-“

“Identify yourself,” it spoke, the voice coming over loudly.

“That’s…” Cortana began with disbelief, “That’s not just English, it’s a human’s voice,” she told the Chief.

“Insurrectionist?”

“_Nobody_ has this kind of mobile fire-power,”

Two blinks in a vertical line activated his loudspeaker.

“Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 of the UNSC. Who are you and how did you get here?” Chief informed.

“UNSC? Are you part of the IMC?” it returned.

IMC? And he didn’t know of the UNSC?

“‘IMC’ isn’t showing up on any of our records,” Cortana told him.

“I… am not aware of what the ‘IMC’ is. I’m part of the UNSC. The United Nations Space Command,” he clarified.

The hulking robot shifted in a distinctly human motion of discomfort.

“I’ve never heard of it. But if you’re not IMC, I guess you’re not an enemy either,” it answered, lowering the gigantic canon.

“Oh boy,” Cortana muttered, “this just got a _whole_ lot more interesting,”

* * *

The man stood facing BT and Cooper unwaveringly.

“Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 of the UNSC. Who are you and how did you get here?” he said in a deep, imposing voice.

“Pilot,” BT spoke up, “There are no records of ‘UNSC’ on any Militia database,”

“UNSC?” Cooper asked, “Are you part of the IMC?”

The figure didn’t move, nor did it lower its weapon.

“I… am not aware of what the ‘IMC’ is. I’m part of the UNSC. The United Nations Space Command,”

“‘United Nations Space Command’ is not listed on any database, Militia or otherwise,” BT informed him.

“So, we’re dealing with a complete unknown?” Cooper asked him.

“Correct. Advise caution. We do not know the capabilities of the ‘UNSC’,” BT answered.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Cooper told Master Chief, “But if you’re not IMC, I guess you’re not an enemy either,” he said, carefully lowering the 40mm tracking canon.

Master Chief lowered his own weapon.

Cooper sighed, “As a show of faith, I’m going to disembark so we can discuss things more carefully. But know that if you try anything, my Titan won’t hesitate to respond accordingly,”

Master Chief nodded, “Understood,” he said, his posture relaxing.

Jack willed the front hatch open.

He grabbed his R-201, holding it at rest, and stepped out, falling the 4 and a half metre drop with incredible grace, touching down to the floor softly with the help of his Jump-Kit.

“I’m Jack Cooper,” he introduced to the now incredibly imposing, at least 7 feet tall, man, “a Pilot of the Militia. And _this_,” he said, waving his arm at BT, “is my Titan,”

“Vanguard Class Titan of the Frontier Militia, designation BT-7274,” BT filled in, the front hatch lowing and the 40mm returning to its resting position in his arms as he spoke.

“So, uh, mind telling us where the hell we are?”

* * *

“As a show of faith, I’m going to disembark so we can discuss things more carefully,”

Disembark? The colossal robot was being controlled manually?

“But know that if you try anything, my Titan won’t hesitate to respond accordingly,”

Titan. Master Chief filed away the name for later use, responding with a simple “Understood,”

The Titan lifted its large canon to a vertical position to allow its ‘face’ to lift.

The hatch opened quickly and smoothly, revealing a seated, and lightly armoured man seated inside, with a strange, cross-shaped, glowing blue visor on his helmet.

With his left hand, he took hold of a rifle, stored to the side of his feet, and lifted it to a resting position.

With the relaxed stride of someone in familiar circumstances, he fell from his Titan, roughly 4 and a half metres, to the ground, landing much softer than should have been possible.

Chief spotted a large apparatus on the man’s lower back, with what looked to be two small jets on either side.

A jetpack, possibly.

He looked to be roughly 5”10’ tall, and walked in what was obviously a forced relaxed manner.

“I’m Jack Cooper,” he introduced, “a Pilot of the Militia. And _this_,” he said, waving his arm at the large robot, “is my Titan,”

A Pilot. Of the Militia.

“Vanguard Class Titan of the Frontier Militia, designation BT-7274,” it spoke in a deep, factual manner as it returned to the relaxed state it was previous.

The ‘eye’ on BT-7274’s chassis watched him intently.

“So, uh,” the Pilot continued, voice uncertain, “mind telling us where the hell we are?” he asked.

“Cortana,” Chief said simply. She was the better talker of the two.

Her hologram appeared just to the side of him, projected by his helmet.

The Pilot tensed for a moment, but nothing else.

“Hello Jack,” she greeted kindly, “My name is Cortana. I’m an AI charged with keeping this one,” Cortana gestured to him, “out of danger. Though it doesn’t generally go to plan,” she laughed.

“Hello Cortana,” the Pilot greeted in return, before pausing for a moment, “You’re very… expressive for an AI,” he noted.

Cortana nodded, “That’s because I’m a Smart AI. An AI created by scanning and replicating the neural pathways of a human mind. It means that I’m essentially without limit. I can learn what I want without it impeding my other functions, and can draw conclusions with limited data, similar to creativity,”

He watched her for a second before responding.

“Incredible,” the Pilot said quietly, “_Nothing_ like you exists where I’m from…” he trailed off.

“And nothing like BT exists where _we’re_ from,” Cortana continued.

“So… we might be from different branches of humanity?” Jack asked, uncertainty clear.

Cortana nodded, “It’s possible. Perhaps a part of one of our civilisations broke off to try their own hand at life. What planet does humanity originate from where you’re from?”

“Earth, in the core worlds,” Cooper answered easily.

Cortana blinked, “We also came from Earth, but it’s not surprising that they chose the same name for their new planet,”

“Right... BT, can you send Cortana any information you have about the history of humanity?”

“Acknowledged. Sending data packet,” The machine answered.

“Packet received. Sending you one of ours,” Cortana said cheerfully.

“Received,”

“Well,” she continued, “I can see why you don’t like the IMC so much,” she said, processing the information of the many atrocities committed by the IMC in the previous decades, before she stopped.

“The past,” she said quietly, “It’s identical,”

Cooper froze. What did she mean, ‘identical’?

“Identical?” Master Chief asked, “How can that be?”

Nobody had an answer for him.

“Records are indeed, the same… Pilot,” BT spoke, “Point of divergence detected. January third, 2246 at 11:43pm Standard Time, the time associated with the first successful test of an Alcubierre Faster-Than-Light drive,”

Cortana’s eyes widened. Her functions shifted focus, instead of sifting through the identical information of the past, and looking at records of the present, they went back to the time indicated by her fellow AI.

“You… have _functional_ Alcubierre drives?” she asked, incredulous.

“The UNSC doesn’t have Jump Drives?” Cooper asked the hologram and soldier pair, “How do you travel _any_where?”

“The UNSC has access to Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engines,” BT answered for him, “Another type of FTL travel in where the vessel is shifted into a higher dimension in a manner similar to a ‘Phase Shift’. Colloquially known as ‘Slipspace travel’. Invented 45 years and 3 months later than ‘Jump Drives’, by Tobias Fleming Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa,”

“Right,” Cortana confirmed.

“Cortana?” Master Chief asked, “What’s an Alcubierre Drive?”

“It’s a type of Faster-Than-Light travel theorised _all_ the way back in the twentieth century. It works by bending the space around the vehicle. Expanding it behind, and shrinking it in front to accelerate it in universal travel, while the vehicle itself remains stationary within its own relative space,” She answered.

“From what I can see; Jump Drives are _incredibly_ efficient,” she continued, “More so than Slipspace engines by orders of magnitude. Conversely, our engines are _much_ faster. The highest ever recorded speed with a Jump Drive was twenty-five thousand times the speed of Light, or about 2.85 Light-years per hour, while _our_ engines are capable of over two _hundred_ and fifty times the speed of Light, or 29.3 LYPH,”

”_30_ Light-years per hour?!” The ex-rifleman exclaimed.

It was unbelievable. Most ships cruised at _one_ LYPH.

Cortana smiled at his amazement, “And the Covenant can go even _faster_,”

“The Covenant?” he asked.

Cortana nodded, “The thing that differs us the most. The Covenant was a super advanced coalition of multiple, intelligent alien species. On February eleventh, 2525, 32 years ago, the Covenant attacked the human planet of Harvest, and eventually destroyed it. The following war between the Covenant and Humanity cost us the lives of 23 billion people, and 76 planets before the war’s conclusion 4 years ago,”

23 billion.

Cooper’s mouth opened, but no words could express the horror he felt.

“Jesus,” was all he could say.

Cortana nodded mutely.

“Chief here,” she motion at the silent man, “is a Spartan. They’re an elite fighting force held in a similar standing to your COMCERT **(Combat Certificate)** Pilots. Chosen from birth, genetically and mechanically modified, and trained in all things combat; they are what kept the human race from extinction,”

“Warning,” BT interrupted, “Movement detected 90 metres out and approaching rapidly,”

Cooper, Master Chief and BT raised their weapons, pointing them in the direction BT had gestured.

“BT, Cortana, can you establish a coms link?” the Master Chief asked.

They looked at each other for a moment.

“Done!” Cortana said, “Crawlers! And lots of ‘em!” she warned, “Sending you the data now BT,”

“Received. Pilot, I suggest you embark,” BT told him.

He ran for his Titan and jumped, then a second time with the assistance of his Jump-Kit into the now open chassis of his Titan.

The link established, and he took control.

“Chief!” he called to the Spartan, “Get to better cover, we’ll take the front,”

“Acknowledged,” he responded, and turned on his heel, quickly moving to a better location.

“Here they come!” Cortana warned.

Then Jack got his first look at his new enemy.

The small robotic dogs poured over the walls and down the path towards them.

He took a shot at them with the 40mm, and was pleased to see that it killed three in proximity to the impact.

Gunfire from behind him alerted him to the Master Chief’s contribution.

Jack fired again. And again and again and again.

Shot after shot into the sea of Crawlers, each taking down two, if not more, of them.

Then they returned fire.

Their mouths opened and small lines of light streaked towards them.

He activated the Vortex shield, and caught dozens of small, glowing bullets in the electro-magnetic barrier.

He aimed the shield at a cluster of four Crawlers that were all taking shots at him and released, each of them exploding as they were shredded by the ammunition of their allies.

They were thinning quickly.

A roar was heard, and one of the spiked Crawlers, an Alpha, if the infographic from BT was correct, started charging at him, a pack forming as the remainders joined it in the suicidal dash.

Cooper grabbed the large Ronin sword from his back, the blade similar in size and shape to a vintage helicopter rotary blade, and swung it horizontally, catching all 6 of them on the blade and striking them with immense force. Their armour was no match for the incredible force imparted upon them in milliseconds, and they damn near disintegrated.

“Chief!” Cortana warned over the com channel.

He turned to see that three of the crawlers had gotten past and were rushing the Chief.

But he couldn’t do anything.

They were too close for the 40mm without hitting his new ally in the process. He was too far for him to assist in melee either.

But it seemed his worry was unfounded.

The Chief drew the large, angular weapon from earlier and opened fire. The glowing rounds, unleashed at a blistering pace, carved through two of the Crawlers as they approached. The third, however, evaded and lunged at him.

Chief’s response was to kill it in a single punch, his armoured first crushing its head without difficulty.

“All hostiles eliminated. Pilot, our Combat Effectiveness Rating remains above 90%. Excellent work,” BT informed.

“What were those?” Cooper asked, “Part of the Covenant?”

“No,” Cortana said, “I’ve accessed a bit of their data, and they go by ‘Prometheans’, but that’s about all we know,”

“Mr. Cooper, BT,” she continued after a moment, “I think it would be best if we worked together from now on,”

“Definitely,” he agreed quickly.

They were stuck here, had no clue how to get out, and were surrounded by unknown enemies. They needed as many allies as they could get.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked.

“Chief and I were separated from the rest of the UNSC for a while, but after our ship was pulled into this planet by its Gravity Well, we started picking up garbled signals from a UNSC ship called the _Infinity._ Scans showed it coming from there,” she pointed up at the centre of the planet where two massive orbs lay suspended.

“That satellite seems to be working like a relay, boosting the _Infinity_’s signal, but the beams coming off it are creating a large amount of interference, so our current goal is to shut them off, then use the satellite to respond to the _Infinity_,”

“New mission directive received. Updating Protocol 2: Uphold the mission,” BT said, “Pilot, take care. It is highly unlikely that we will find any batteries to aid in repair. Advise keeping sustained damage within the regenerating Energy Shield threshold,”

“Batteries?” Cortana questioned, “What fuel source do you use?”

“Standard Titan fuel source is in the form of liquid Deuterium batteries. They supply the ‘cold fusion’ reactor within my chassis,”

“That’s fortunate,” Cortana stated, “The energy source for us is _also_ fusion, and a lot of Marines carry around Fusion Packs, which we’ll hopefully be able to integrate to you without much difficulty,”

“So the main priority is still to link with the _Infinity_,” Cooper mused.

“Right,” Cortana agreed, “Let’s get moving then,”

* * *

The newly made team of four, two human and two machine, continued.

They came across another party of Prometheans, but they were swiftly, and rather easily dealt with.

BT’s 40mm canon proved excellent against the infantry sized targets they faced. Even the armoured Knights fell in just two direct hits. Watchers, the flying enemies, proved more difficult. With their small size and airborne position, landing hits with the slower projectiles became challenging. This, however, was not a problem for their Spartan ally, who was able to carve them out of the air with his pilfered Hard Light weaponry.

They reached a circular platform, set into the rock they had been trekking on, when Cortana showed them all a transmission she was receiving.

It was garbled beyond recognising anything more than a humanoid head. It spoke, but the static, and other distortion, made it too difficult to interpret anything he said.

“The relay interference is increasing,” Cortana told them, “We must be getting close to the pylon,”

Cooper looked up at the beam. With how gigantic it was, it was incredibly hard to tell how far away they were, so he’d have to go on her word that they, were indeed, close.

“More contacts detected,” BT warned, and the seasoned soldiers shifted their focus.

Crawlers appeared over the cliffs around them and began firing.

The Titan’s Vortex shield went up, protecting both parties as Chief returned fire, dispatching multiple with precise bursts from his Light Rifle in quick succession.

Cooper enabled BT’s Acolyte Pod, which automatically activated the overlay for the MTMS **(Multi-Target Missile System)**, where he painted the five remaining cliff Crawlers, and opened fire.

Five missiles streaked out from the pod, each immediately turning and hunting down their specified target. Five small booms sounded moments later, each signifying a successful hit-and-kill.

They looked down to the next clearing. Three more Crawlers, one Knight, and one Watcher.

Cooper fired a 40mm round, hitting the top of the Knight, the resulting detonation pushing the Watcher above it away, and doing enough damage to send it into a panic.

“Chief! The Watcher!” Cortana guided.

Chief followed up, putting a beam of condensed light into the fleeing enemy, courtesy of the Light Rifle’s secondary fire mode, killing it before it could flee.

A follow up 40mm round took the surprised Knight out of the equation, and Chief easily finished off the Crawlers that were approaching.

Unbeknownst to BT and Cooper, Master Chief’s HUD suddenly flared, the visual elements shaking and distorting.

“What’s that distortion?” he asked into his helmet.

“That’s,” Cortana paused and sighed as she appeared on his overlay, “me. Something about moving through those portals is increasing the load on my systems,”

“Are you… going to be alright?” John asked with concern. A rare display of emotion from the normally stoic warrior.

“Don’t worry,” she smiled, but even Chief could tell it was forced, “I’ve held off Rampancy this long, haven’t I?” came her rhetorical response, voice bitter.

Chief walked up the ramp to the top of the structure they had arrived at, to find another corridor.

“Master Chief,” came BT-7274’s voice over the radio, “My chassis will not fit through that hallway. We will climb around this cliff and regroup on the other side,”

“Understood,” he responded. He had wondered what they would do when they eventually came to a passage too small for the behemoth.

“See you in a few, Chief,” came the mildly upbeat of Jack Cooper, reminiscent to that of Cortana’s behaviour. It was no wonder they communicated so well, despite only having known each over for less than half an hour.

Chief walked through the hallway quickly. It was identical to the one he had passed earlier, just before encountering his new companions.

Chief came to another weapon rack, one containing two Light Rifles and a ‘Scattershot’. From the infographic Cortana provided, it was a shotgun, but with high armour penetration, and a ricochet potential that came from using ionised partials as the projectiles.

He considered the weapon, and while he decided against taking it himself, but believed it may better suit the fast and nimble Pilot.

He placed the multitude of shells into his Ammo dispenser, and picked up the weapon in his left hand, while he held the Light Rifle in his right.

He came to a door at the end of the hallway, and stepped close enough to activate it, then stepped through.

He was greeted with a large compound, the, by far, largest building being the beam array they had come to find and shut off.

A Knight standing on top of one of the small buildings spotted him, and roared, alerting its comrades to the hostile, before it bent down, and its back split.

It was creating a Watcher.

Chief dropped the Scattershot at his feet, and immediately started firing at the Knight, taking advantage of the full second of opportunity where it stood still.

Three precise shots to its head, and its shield broke. One more and it disintegrated just as it finished launching the Watcher.

Rather than engage him, the Watcher folded, and begin bathing the area where the Knight had disintegrated with a strange blue light.

What was it doing? Chief didn’t know, but he did know that it couldn’t be good, so he opened fire again. Two shots was all it took, and it exploded in the air with a mechanical shriek that Chief had come to identify as the Watchers’ unique death throes.

Chief switched targets to the three Crawlers that were now rushing his position. As he was about to open fire, a deep _ping_ noise sounded, and the three dog-like constructs were destroyed by an explosion.

Good. The cavalry had arrived.

He looked to his right to witness BT drop a few metres from his suspended position on the wall, back down to the surface.

“Miss us?” Cooper asked cheerily as he opened fire on the remaining Crawlers in the vicinity.

“I don’t know about him,” Cortana answered as the few remaining hostiles were efficiently killed off, “but _I_ certainly did,”

Her hologram appeared and beckoned to him, “C’mere Jack. Chief’s got a gift for you,”

Cooper was surprised. A gift? In this place?

He disembarked from BT and followed Master Chief when he turned and returned to the door that must have been the exit to the hallway he had taken.

Chief bent down and grabbed the shotgun he had found in his off hand, before turning to the pilot, and tossing it to him.

Cooper was surprised, but acted quickly, catching the strange tubular device, seemingly a weapon, in his hands. He was more surprised, however, when the weapon seemed to fall apart as he put his hand onto the trigger guard, before the pieces slowly returned to their original positions.

“What is it?” he asked. It was large, around the size of an EPG, but reasonably light. It wouldn’t slow him down.

“A shotgun using ionised particles as projectiles. Semi-automatic with high armour penetration. Designate: Scattershot,” BT informed him using the information packet he had just received from Cortana, “Pilot. I recommend you take this weapon. Data from the Master Chief and Cortana suggests that standard ballistic weaponry will have little effect on enemy Prometheans,”

Jack nodded in understanding, inspecting the weapon. He shifted its position and weight, put an eye down the sights, and got a general feel of how the Scattershot would affect his movement.

“Great,” he said, nodding again, satisfied with the inspection, “Thanks Chief,”

The mountain of a man nodded back.

Cortana’s hologram reappeared, and she grinned at him.

“Chief’s fast,” she said before pausing, “but not as fast as you are. You’ll get better use out of it than we will,”

“Right,” he agreed.

He took a couple of steps and leapt, jumping back into BT’s open cockpit, as he had followed his charge to the hallway.

“Okay,” Jack said from within BT as he finally took stock of the surroundings, specifically the large structure and gigantic beam escaping from it, “How do we shut off the beam?”

“The beam control seems to be at the top of the tower,” Cortana answered, “but the entrance is shielded. Scanners are picking up three power cores for it, so we’ve gotta take them down, then climb up. I’ve marked the cores on your maps,”

“What kind of numbers are we lookin’ at?” Cooper asked in return.

“Less than you’d think, considering the location. Nothing more than what we’ve already seen,” Cortana responded.

“Then I say we split up. Both parties are capable of dealing with the Prometheans by themselves, and we’ll take out the cores much quicker,” Jack suggested.

Cortana’s hologram nodded, “That sounds like a good idea,”

“Master Chief, you can get one, then start making your way up. Me and BT can get the other two, then I’ll meet you at the top,”

“Understood,” Chief replied, before making his way to the closest marked target.

He reached it very quickly, the housing of the core being very close to where they had just stood.

He heard the thundering steps of the Titan as his allies made their way for the other cores.

Chief focused back on the task at hand when his motion tracker lit up with the detection of hostile movement.

He peaked around the wall to look at the core’s container, and spotted a Knight above it, while four Crawlers patrolled around it.

He drew the Suppressor and immediately opened fire on the Crawlers. The high rate of fire and armour penetrative properties of the weapon ensured the death of each before they could so much as react to his presence.

With its minions destroyed by a wave of Hardlight, the Knight roared in challenge, leaping from the roof of the small structure towards the Chief.

Chief backed up around the wall and allowed it to pursue him until it rounded the corner, where he then dumped a long burst into the surprised Knights helmet.

Its skin flickered, and a stream of tiny particles fractured off, signifying the destruction of its armour.

In a manner reflective of its brethren, it stumbled, before its mask split, only to catch an explosive 50 calibre round from the Magnum Chief had drawn in his off-hand.

With the threat dealt with, the Magnum returned to the thigh holster, and Chief rounded the wall once more, this time with the purpose of destroying the power core.

“One down!” came the cheerful voice of the Pilot over comms, evidently having cleared and destroyed his first core.

“Energy levels on the shield dropping! Good work Pilot,” Cortana responded, “Chief, yours is just in there, marked on your HUD,”

A red ping, simply labelled, ‘Destroy’ appeared off to his left, within the housing the Knight had stood on.

He walked to the side, past the ramp, and found an open door.

Inside was a large, translucent and glowing sphere, bright white in colour and suspended in the air. Lightning came off it, connecting with the floor and ceiling.

Chief decided to test the Pulse Grenades.

He took one from his waist and tossed it to the floor under the power core.

Immediately upon landing, it launched into the air and detonated, forming a spherical energy field, about 3 and a half meters across.

The initial detonation didn’t destroy the core, but he could see that the field was continuously straining it, the cores colour shifting from pure white to a dulled pink.

The field pulsed four times, over nearly three seconds, before it detonated, destroying the core with a bright flash.

“Two down!” Cortana cheered, “We’re gonna start heading up. Last one’s on you two,” she told the Titan and Pilot combo.

“Got it,” he returned, “We’re nearly there,”

“C’mon Chief,” Cortana began, “Marking the ramp,”

And indeed, a blue ping appeared, only 40 metres from his current position. He began moving immediately.

He encountered no enemies, but spotted BT making his way to the third and final core.

He moved up the ramp quickly, turned 180 degrees and continued up, but stopped before the top as his motion tracker lit up.

Three Knights, all hunkered down just above him. There was no way for him to get past them.

Cortana knew it too, so she reopened the comms channel.

“BT, Cooper, we’ve got three Knights waiting in cover just ahead of us. Think you can help us out?” she asked.

* * *

“Yeah, I think we can,” Jack replied, looking at the filled Core metre, ready and waiting to unleash a large, guided-rocket salvo.

“You thinking what I’m thinking BT?” he asked his mechanical friend.

“I believe I am Pilot,” he responded, “Coordinates for Danger-Close Air-Strike received from Cortana. Read for launch, on your mark,”

A push to the neural link, and the Acolyte Pods began launching the salvo high into the air, before streaming up towards the main structure.

They turned in the air once they were suitably above the tower, and split into three streams and rained down on the cowering Prometheans.

“You got ‘em!” Cortana cheered, “Thanks for the assist,”

“No worries. See you up there in a minute, Chief,” he finished.

“Alright BT,” he began, “Just one more core,”

“Correct,” was his curt reply, “Motion tracker indicates more hostile around the core containment,”

“Got it,” he replied.

He pointed the 40mm canon at the now visible Knight and unleashed a round.

The Knight, which had been facing away from them, was knocked off its feet, and very quickly destroyed by the follow-up shot. Then the Crawlers engaged, two from either side of the containment.

Vortex Shield went up a moment after he put a round in between the two on the left, catching the munitions from the two remainder.

He returned them after a moment of collection, the bright yellow rounds shredding them.

Cooper then aimed the 40mm again, and put three rounds onto the floor within the containment, easily destroying the core within.

“Shield’s down!” Cortana acknowledged immediately, “Great work Pilot! Now get up here!”

He laughed lightly as he disembarked, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said, looking back to his Titan, “Alright BT, time for a fastball,”

BT’s frontal camera looked to the top of the structure, where Master Chief was looking down to them, only just visible.

“Understood,” he said as he bent down and readied his hand for the toss.

Jack climbed in, complete faith in his Titan to get the throw just right.

“Height; 42 metres. Distance; 23 metres. Mass; 89 kilograms. Wind; minimal. Calculating trajectory,” he listed off before pausing, “Calculated. Pilot, ready yourself for a ‘Fastball’,”

“I’m ready BT,” he answered immediately, and BT threw him.

* * *

Chief was unsure how the Pilot would reach him, considering what Cortana had told him about the Jump-Kit enhanced movement. Perhaps he would run up the ramps, or maybe chain jumps and wall-running.

He didn’t expect the gigantic robot to _throw_ him.

Jack Cooper flew through to air towards him, climbing higher and higher, before he reached the apex of the arc, right at the lip of the platform.

He landed and took all of two steps to stop himself.

It was a perfect landing, as far as Chief could tell. He had cleared the necessary height by a _centimetre_, if he was generous, and touched down as smoothly as though he had walked instead of being tossed.

It would have taken an incredible degree of trust in his companion, as the fall likely would have harmed him, Jump-Kit or not.

Something Chief could compare himself to. He would follow Cortana’s instructions as though they were his own, without hesitation or concern.

“Master Chief,” the Pilot greeted, slightly smug, “Cortana,”

“Pilot,” Cortana greeted in turn, “Nice of you to finally join us,” she replied cheekily.

“Yeah well, I had some stuff to do,” he returned with a laugh.

They got on well, Chief noted. It would be good for communication in the future.

“C’mon then you two,” Cortana said, addressing them both, “Let’s get this beam down,”

Cooper nodded, settling back into a serious mindset. While the banter with Cortana was fun, they still had a job to do if they wanted to survive.

The two warriors crossed the three Hardlight bridges to the main tower, Jack a little sceptical at first, having never seen Hardlight prior to that day. He was unsure it would function, but seeing the Chief step onto it unhesitantly, he followed.

They entered a wide tunnel, at least three times their height, and made their way into the tower.

They reached the end, only a few seconds later, at an elevator.

Chief stepped to the front and pushed the control at the end, and it began steadily rising.

“Have a look at this!” Cortana declared, bringing forth a static filled image of a man onto each of their HUDs. They recognised him as the man who had make the previous transmission, though now the audio was nearly distinguishable.

_“Thi… -Captai- -l Rio… surv-ors -f th- For-ard -to Daw- we are -proachi- your la- -own loca-on”_

“Did he say Forward Unto Dawn?” Chief asked.

“You’re ship?” Cooper asked in return.

“Yes,” Cortana answered, “They must have intercepted out distress beacon,”

“The beacon was pulled into Requiem with us,” Chief began, “If they try to follow us-“

“They’ll get caught in the gravity well! I’ll keep trying to warn them! You shut down that beam!” Cortana responded with urgency.

The elevator slowed to a stop as they reached the top of the pylon, displaying a large spinning contraption, with the beam emanating from it.

“That’s the beam control!” Cortana said, marking the device, though it was quite obvious, as the only visible interface of any kind.

Master Chief approached it quickly, Cooper following behind him.

Chief grabbed the handle of the device and began to pull, drawing it out by half a metre before twisting the handle and pulling more.

“That’s it,” Cortana urged, “The signal is clearing up,”

Another quarter turn, then Chief slammed the handle back into place.

The beam shut off immediately, the contraption slowed its spinning and lowered, a flooring stretching across the now open space.

“Fleetcom Actual,” came the transmission again, now nearing perfect clarity, “we are detecting a faint UNSC signal from _inside_ the planet,”

“They haven’t hit the gravity well yet,” Master Chief observed.

There’s still too much interference to warn them,” Cortana informed, “You’re gotta disable the other beam before they’re pulled inside like we were!” she ordered.

“Portal’s open! Jack! Follow us! I’ve given BT a bigger one, so he’ll meet us there!” Cortana said.

“Got it!” he returned, quickly following the rushing Spartan.

The Spartan leapt into the swirling portal and vanished from sight.

“Here goes nothing,” he mumbled, and jumped after him, and his vision filled with white.


	2. Chapter 2

As Jack went through the portal, he thought.

He had done so much, in so little time, it felt absurd. And to think, all of this started when Captain Lastimosa, a _legendary_ master-class Pilot, decided to take _him_, a Rifleman - just another grunt on the battlefield - under his wing to train as a Pilot.

He still felt the disbelief and guilt from when he had died. Died protecting him, no less, and with his dying breath, he gave _him_, still just a Rifleman, control over his Titan.

He didn’t think he was anywhere near ready, but he’d be damned if he didn’t honour his mentor’s legacy.

So he put on Lastimosa’s Jump-Kit and helmet, and set out to retrieve batteries for BT-7274, with only his minimal VR training to keep him from going splat after hitting a wall at speeds many times higher than a normal person could achieve.

Within BT, to begin with at least, Cooper had felt invincible. Like he could take on the best the planet had to offer, and come out on top. The frequent close-calls had changed his opinions, as had the many situations where he’d been forced to disembark to complete something he couldn’t while within BT.

The closest calls had all been against Blisk’s Lieutenants. Each skill Pilots in their own right, none were easy to defeat, and they had forced Cooper closer to death than he’d ever like to admit. But it forced him to adapt, to be faster, and to _improve_. He could now move with the confidence of a master Pilot, in _and_ out of his Titan, and friend, BT-7274.

The Arc still confused him. Some super powerful energy source the IMC had discovered, that had the ability to warp time and space. The IMC had planned to unleash its power upon Harmony, the Militia’s home planet, but fortunately, they had been able to stop it before it got off-world, in a manner that should have been enough to kill them, along with the planet itself.

Instead, they ended up here.

A flash of light later, and Cooper exited the portal, finding himself in a hallway, stylised like the ‘Promethean’ structures he had seen earlier.

The Master Chief stood a couple steps ahead of him, and upon seeing his arrival, began down the hallway.

“So where are we now?” Cooper asked.

“We’re back where Chief and I got dropped off when we portaled from the surface,” Cortana answered, “We should be able to take another portal from here to the other beam pylon,”

They reached the end of the hallway, and a door opened, and Jack found himself now perpendicular to the planet’s ‘surface’.

The large floating orb at the centre of the planet now sat directly in front of him, instead of directly above.

From the right, and only the right, came a giant purple beam of light, connecting and dispersing across the massive sphere.

And then, in the empty space on the left side, a portal appeared. A blue-white hole, with a deep black centre, opened like a tear in space itself. Then another opened… and another.

From these humongous portals, out shot three massive ships, with a multitude of smaller ones alongside them.

Jack gaped. They were so stupendously large. A kilometre in length, at the very least, and much more if they were further away than he thought.

“I was wondering why the _Infinity_ hadn’t encountered the Covenant yet,” Cortana said.

This was the Covenant? Hadn’t they been defeated?

Cortana, seemingly already knowing what he was going to ask, spoke, “These Covenant aren’t outfitted like Covenant we’ve faced in the past. My leading theory is that this is a splinter group of the Covenant,” Cortana explained.

If a splinter group had ships of that size, Jack could nearly believe that they had killed over 20 billion people. It also made him wonder about how humanity had not only managed to survive, but come out victorious.

“What are they doing here?” Chief asked as another portal opened on the left size of the large platform.

“_They’re_ heading for the second pylon as well,” Cortana answered.

“That _can’t_ be a coincidence,” Chief mused.

Chief and Cooper stepped through the portal, and were immediately greeted with the sounds of combat. Gunfire, growls, and more were audible in the rundown hallway they found themselves in, the walls and ceiling blending into rock, like it had been constructed within a cave.

“Sounds like the Prometheans don’t want the Covenant here, either,” Cortana said, voice tense, “The battlenet’s already lighting up with reports of resistance all around the pylon,” she informed.

“Then we’d better get moving,” Cooper said, to which Master Chief nodded, “How far is BT?” he continued.

“Pilot,” came the Titan across the radio, “I am currently too far away to rendezvous without taking significant damage to my armour and chassis. Protocol 2: Uphold the mission. You should continue without me to disable the pylon until such a time as we may safely re-Link,”

Jack frowned. It would be much more difficult without BT’s impressive firepower, but it seemed they’d have to proceed separately.

“Got it BT,” he responded, “Keep yourself out of trouble whenever you can,” he said, cutting off the transmission, and turning back to the Chief, “Alright. Let’s go,”

Chief nodded, and took the lead down the hallway and up through the cave. The cave lead to a hole, which seemed to continue into another arm of the cave. Seeing no other option, they dropped through, and after a few more steps, exited the cave into a small clearing.

Three loud thumps suddenly echoed around the area as three purple pods, all smooth lines and flowing curves, hit the ground just ahead of them. Three panels lifted on each, and out stepped aliens.

They must have been the covenant, Jack concluded. The colour and shape of the pods held many similarities with the gigantic motherships he had seen approaching the pylon.

The first creature he took note of was short and stocky, with a large hump on its back extending above its small head. An Unggoy, or Grunt, BT identified through Cooper’s Head’s Up Display, highlighting the creature with a red outline.

Many of the Grunts stepped out of the pods, and immediately began firing upon the Promethean forces that had shown up to resist. Some fired fast traveling, green orbs of super-heated plasma out of small handheld pistols, while others fired long, slow moving, pink crystals from larger pistols with more of the pink crystals protruding from it.

As he watched, he noticed a burst of pink crystals curve in the air to intercept a dodging Knight. Homing. He’d have to watch out for them.

The second alien species he saw was what really worried Jack. Taller than even the Master Chief, with a lean figure, wearing smooth armour plating, and with powerful, reptilian limbs, they looked to be the apex of apex predators.

A Sangheili, or Elite, BT informed. Jack agreed with the name. They certainly looked to be the ‘Elites’ of the battlefield.

As he watched, the Elite reared back, showing off the twin mandibles it had instead of a lower jaw as it opened its mouth a let free a deep, booming roar.

The Prometheans responded with gunfire, and the Elite ducked into cover as a flash of electricity spread across its skin, signifying that its personal shield had withstood the attack, though had suffered from it.

Chief engaged, putting a burst into the distracted Elite. It reacted admirably, turning before the three-round burst had completed, though still not fast enough. The first two rounds of Chief’s next burst shattered its shield, while the third destroyed the inside of its head, and it collapsed, dead.

Jack sprang into action, launching himself at the left wall, and taking three steps across it before jumping off, towards and above the surprised Covenant.

“The Demon!” screeched one of the Grunts as it noticed the Master Chief, which only served to draw their attention away from their rapidly approaching death from above.

Cooper pulled the trigger on his R-201, the high rate-of-fire carbine shredding the unsuspecting Grunt. He switched targets as he began to fall, killing another Grunt before he hit the ground in a slide, his Jump-Kit propelling him along the floor as he fired at a third Grunt, rotating as he slid past the stationary target.

He launched into another jump out of the slide as he switched his weapon, the R-201’s magazine having emptied completely. His leg hit the purple drop-pod, and kicked off as he rotated in the air, his other foot coming down on the head of a scrambling Elite.

It staggered back, its shield holding. It didn’t, however, withstand the point-blank Scattershot to the chest, and the Elite immediately died, its body evaporating into glowing orange polygons before it even hit the ground.

The remaining two Grunts were dispatched with precise shots from the Chief, as he watched the Pilot decimate their forces, before reloading his rifle, with great interest. The smaller warrior’s mobility was astounding, even with the information Cortana had provided him, and he had a feeling he was just beginning to see what he was capable of.

Another roar was heard, this one more akin to a mechanical screech, unlike the Elite’s guttural howl. Master Chief ducked into cover as the two Knights began firing upon him, before returning fire to keep their attention away from the Pilot.

Cooper capitalised on it. He jumped at the drop-pod again, kicked off it towards another, jumped in the air with his Jump-Kit, hit the other pod, took a couple of steps across its smooth armour and leapt towards the Knights, who stood atop a raised area of rock.

The Knight on the left swung its sword arm at him as he landed, but aimed too high, as the Pilot slid smoothly underneath it, popping a Scattershot into its torso, resulting in a shattered shield. The other Knight swung lower, so he jumped up and over it towards the attacker. He kicked off the surprised Knight’s head and pumped its head with ionised particles, the proximity, and critical location rendering its shield useless as it died immediately.

The first Knight attempted to take advantage of his airborne position, swinging at him once more. His second jump meant the attempt was wasted, as Cooper easily cleared the Knight, dumping a barrage of lead into its exposed, and unshielded back as he fell.

Master Chief blinked. The Pilot had eliminated the two _significant_ threats in a manner that was not only incredibly efficient, but also incredibly impressive, all the while carrying himself like it was just another day.

“I see what you mean about them being tough,” Cooper remarked, sending the empty magazine from his weapon with a flick of his wrist, “Took me a whole mag _after_ I broke its shield,” he finished, pulling back the bolt of his rifle, chambering a new round from the fresh magazine.

Chief looked around the battlefield, this time studying more than just the layout that would affect horizontal movement. All the possibilities that could come a short wall-run, or from a second jump, a slide, a wall-jump. So many options revealed themselves, and his companion had access to all of them, along with the skills and experience to utilise them effectively.

Master Chief was _very_ glad the Pilot was on his side.

“Yes,” he answered, “Though it seems to still be effective against the Covenant.

Cooper nodded in response, “How tough are the Elite’s shields? They as hard as the ones the Knights have?”

“No,” Chief said with a shake of his helmeted head, “You should be able to break the shield, and the kill the Elite before your magazine is empty,” he answered. The 30 rounds he had counted would be sufficient, he concluded, having seen its effectivity against the Grunts.

Cooper sighed, “Good. Those things are scary lookin’ up close,” he remarked, and Chief felt his lips twitch in amusement, before he walked to the corpse of a Grunt, taking its weapon.

“What’s that?” Cooper asked.

“A Plasma Pistol,” Cortana answered, her avatar appearing over the Chief’s shoulder, “An overcharged shot can break an Elite’s shield in one hit, and has minor homing properties. Along with an armour piercing weapon, it’s an excellent way to eliminate Sangheili warriors without much difficulty,”

Cooper nodded, seeing its use.

“Want one?” Cortana asked, gesturing at another weapon on the floor.

Cooper shook his head, patting a pistol on his thigh, “Nah. It may be useful, but not as useful as this,” he responded, Cortana nodding in understanding

“What is it?” Chief asked.

“A Smart Pistol,” Cortana began, “It’s an emergency weapon that Titans carry with their AI Core, in case they’re destroyed. It syncs with the Pilots’ HUD **(Head’s Up Display)** and automatically locks on, and tracks, targets in proximity to them,” she explained.

Chief understood why he kept it over the Plasma Pistol. Such a weapon was too valuable to ever give up.

They continued forward, and encountered another conflict between the Covenant and Prometheans, this one with significantly more casualties, making their clean-up effort all the easier.

They acquired additional ammunition for their weapons, along with a pair of plasma grenades each from the slain enemies, as well as a ‘Hardlight Shield’ one of the Knights dropped for Chief to use, before Cortana pointed them to a ramped outcropping near the end of the area.

They rounded the corner, and witnessed a Knight brutally dispatch an Elite with its sword arm. They reacted quickly, Cooper pumping it with ionised particles to break it shield, and Chief following up with a burst into its helmet to finish it off.

Up near the top of the ramp were three Watchers, the flying foes that the Knights could conjure. One began to bathe a platform at the top in blue light. Chief had seen it before. It is what one had attempted on the body of its fallen summoner. He tried firing at it, but was forced back into cover as the other two provided covering fire.

Cooper tilted his head towards a short rocky wall a few metres ahead, and Chief nodded in response, lifting up three fingers. Two fingers. One finger.

Chief leant out to return fire with the fully automatic Suppressor as Cooper jumped against the rock wall next to them and kicked off it towards the next piece of cover. Cooper slid behind it just as the space he had previously occupied was suddenly filled with a bright, hot, orange beam of light.

Chief recognised the sound of a large energy discharge, a loud, high pitched hiss, as Cooper turned back to him.

“Turret!” he shouted, having just spotted the large, triangular structure that was now floating in the empty space the Watcher had previously been lighting up.

The beam vanished a second later, and the sound with it, replaced instead with a low hum that was gradually building in volume and pitch. Cooper peaked out fired a long burst at it with the R-201, with unfortunately small results.

He ducked back into cover as the whine reached its apex, and it unleashed another blistering beam at the space his head was just in.

“Cover me!” Cooper called to Chief, before waiting a moment longer for the beam to disappear. Chief agreed with a nod, and leant out to start firing at the Watchers again, though at this range, the Suppressor was more of a scare tactic than an effective weapon.

Cooper stood, unhooked a Firestar from his belt, and lobbed the adhesive shuriken of thermite at the turret. The Watcher closest to it, unfortunately, had another idea. It caught the grenade in what they could only assume was a magnetic field, rotated it around beneath it, and hurled it back at the startled Pilot.

Mental note. _Never_ throw a grenade when a Watcher is around.

Cooper dived out from his cover as it became flooded with burning thermite, right into the turrets line of fire as the charge once again reached its peak.

“Chief!” Cortana yelled, though he was already moving. Standing firm in front of the scrambling Pilot, he lifted the Hardlight Shield, and prayed it would be strong enough as the turret unleashed.

The Shield held as Cooper managed to get back on his feet. Drawing his Smart Pistol, his HUD immediately began working on locks for the Watchers through the, thankfully transparent, Shield. Four locks on each Watcher were established as the turret finished its bombardment.

“Drop it!” he called to the Chief and the Shield went down, followed immediately by 12 shots ringing out in quick succession. The Watchers all detonated, and the pair focused fire on the turret. One magazine of the R-201, and four bursts from the Light Rifle later, and the turret collapsed into glowing polygons, disintegrating entirely.

Cooper huffed loudly, “Let’s not do that again,” he groaned, “And thanks for the save,”

“Agreed,” the Chief returned simply.

Then walked to the top of the ramp, and stopped before a short drop when they heard a low whine.

Two Elites, riding floating, purple, vehicles rounded the corner at high speed, only for the first to be gunned out of his seat by a Knight a short distance away, and the other to be speared on its blade as it attempted to get past.

Focused fire from the Chief and the Pilot quickly dealt with the Knight, and awarded them with two Ghosts, the vehicles the Elites had been using.

Cooper looked over the now grounded vehicles. They were roughly the size and shape of a two-wheeled motorcycle, though without wheels, and two wing-like appendages on the front of its form.

“Hop on,” Cortana instructed him as Chief climbed into the other, as she put up an infographic of its controls on his HUD.

It was fortunately, very simple. A one-push button to start it, and two joysticks was all it came with. Left joystick controlled its omnidirectional movement, with the other controlled its rotation, and the pitch of the dual Plasma Repeaters on the front. A trigger on the left joystick activated the vehicles boost, while the trigger on the other fired its weapons. A small metre on the ‘dashboard’, what was actually a transmission from a front camera, displayed the level of charge on the boost, and that was everything.

He turned it on, and it jerked half a metre into the air, nearly tossing him from his seat. He tested the controls, and found the movement to all be working correctly. It stopped surprisingly quickly when he release the joystick, especially for a vehicle with no friction. With the help of Cortana, a crosshair appeared on his HUD, to roughly indicate where his shots would land when he fired the Repeaters.

They continued on their ‘borrowed’ vehicles past a crashed Phantom, a transport ship the Covenant used, towards their goal, the pylon. The high mobility, strong cover, and strong firepower the Ghosts offered, made the Covenant and Prometheans they encountered laughably easy to deal with.

With their path blocked, they began navigating through a cave that went in the general direction towards the pylon. Then another transmission began playing.

It was garbled and distorted beyond comprehension, unfortunately, so nothing could be discerned from it.

“The relay’s signal is breaking up again,” Cortana observed, “We’re almost to the beam,” she finished as the exited the cave.

There was another Covenant/Promethean skirmish just past the mouth of the cave, though this one was much smaller, and there was a wide Promethean door behind the combating forces. No Elites, nor Knights fought, however, there was a new species of alien.

To Jack, they looked to be some combination of reptilian and avian. The small, lithe creatures carried circular shields that nearly completely covered them. The two Kig-Yar, or Jackals, carried their shields in their left hands, one yellow, the other blue, while their rights held Plasma Pistols.

Upon Cooper and Master Chief arriving, and opening fire on the Crawlers, the Covenant forces cheered, until they rounded on the unsuspecting Jackals and Grunts and opened fire, gunning down the unsuspecting Covenant.

Cortana broadcasted another distorted transmission to them.

“They’ve found the opening!” she said in panic, “We’d better get up to that relay, and fast,”

The wide Promethean door opened into a long hallway as they approached it, and they sped through it, quickly coming to the exit.

The door at the end of the hall opened to reveal a structure identical to what they had found at the other pylon. However, this time, the area was already filled with combat. Gunfire filled their ears as they took stock of the heavy Covenant and Promethean presence.

To their left, Chief spotted an Elite making his way quickly to a grounded Banshee, a small, single occupant flying vehicle. Sleek in shape, with short and thin wings on either side.

He opened fire upon the Elite, but too late, as it managed to squeeze into the vehicle before the Ghost’s Plasma Repeaters could cut through its shields. The Elite took to the skies quickly, in hopes to escape the Chief’s onslaught.

Master Chief cursed himself. That had been a prime opportunity to not only reduce the amount of hostile Banshees he would have had to deal with, but also possibly secured one for himself. Banshees were always a pain to deal with. Agile, but with armour tough enough to shrug off most small arms fire, and impressive firepower curtesy of its Plasma Repeaters and Fuel Rod Cannon; it was an impressive display of the Covenant’s craftsmanship.

A metallic _ping_ sounded, and the Banshee shook as an explosion struck its cabin. The explosion, however, did little damage to the armour, serving as more of a distraction by itself. A second shot struck it, and then a third.

It was then that the Banshee’s pilot began to panic. The Elite began boosting away as a barrage or rockets began hunting it through the air. The pilot, in a desperate attempt to survive, put the vehicle into a barrel roll, but the agile missiles had no difficultly tracking it through the manoeuvre and blasting it out of the air with a series of detonations.

Cooper grinned at the display, “Nice of you to join us BT,” he said, tracking the vapour trails back to the source, his Titan, who dropped down from a tall outcropping of rock nearby, “Good to see you again buddy,”

“Likewise,” BT responded in his ever serious tone, “Protocol 1: Link to Pilot. Cooper, please embark; we work better together,”

“Thought you’d never ask,” he laughed, jumping from his Ghost to the cliff-face beside him, and then jumping from it to the open chassis of BT.

A sudden barrage of plasma forced Cooper to put up the Vortex Shield, dispersing the bolts along its surface. He looked up at the source. Another Banshee was taking a pass at them.

“Pilot,” BT began, “Advise caution: Enemy aircraft, designate ‘Banshee’s, are equipped with some form of anti-locking technology. I cannot create a lock with the Multi-Target-Missile-System. You will need to paint them with the 40mm in order to destroy them with the Tracking Rockets,”

“Got it,” he replied as the Banshee turned off its assault and boosted away, “Thanks for the head-up,”

“Protocol 3: Protect the Pilot,” BT responded simply.

Cooper tried to strike the fleeing Banshee with the 40mm, but it was moving too quickly, and too erratically, for him to land the shots, and it escaped from the range of the Tracking Rockets, at which point he gave up.

“Protocol 2: Uphold the mission,” BT said over the radio, “We must bring down the shield on the pylon quickly if we wish to contact the _Infinity_,” he warned.

“Right!” Cortana agreed, “Can you keep the Banshees off us?” she asked.

“Can do,” Cooper replied, keeping a close eye on the two visible vehicles.

“Great. Let’s get going Chief,” she responded.

Chief nodded, and began moving his Ghost towards the first power core, firing at loose patches of Grunts, Jackals, and Crawlers as he went.

Another Ghost appeared from within the complex, and began firing at the Master Chief’s Ghost. The 40mm explosive that went off against its frontal armour caused its pilot to reassess the situation, turning to the colossal robot with no small degree of trepidation.

A second and third 40mm round hit the Ghost’s chassis before the pilot returned fire, but the barrage of tracking missiles, fired over BT’s Vortex Shield, blasted the vehicle into pieces, killing the single Elite occupant.

“Ghost down!” Cortana cheered, “I’ve found the closest of the shield’s power cores. Marking it on your HUDs,”

Indeed, a glowing red beacon appeared on their respective video feeds, labelled ‘Destroy. It was very close, only 43m from where they stood, so they made their way towards the core’s containment cell.

However, it seemed the Covenant had already fortified it themselves. Large, rounded shields, similar to what the Jackals had carried, though much closer to transparent, grew from devices on the ground. They were large enough to fully cover a person from the front, and then some.

Behind the shields, next to the containment cell, there was a multitude of Covenant. Two Elites, and four Grunts. The Ghost, and BT together, had little difficulty finishing them off, and Chief was able to manoeuvre his Ghost close enough to be able to shoot the core without leaving the protection of his vehicle.

“Power core down,” Cortana observed, “Shields weak, but still online,”

Cooper spotted a Banshee beginning to head in their direction, likely aiming to make a pass, all the while blasting them with plasma. Cooper started firing at it, and managed to land two shots before it turned and escaped out of his effective range.

“Take out the other two cores and we can access the pylon,” Cortana informed.

They moved quickly to the second core, dispatching limited amounts of Covenant troops as they went.

“Second core down!” Cortana cheered, as Chief blasted the floating sphere with his Ghost, “Good jo- Sniper! Look out!”

A green beam blasted down at the Chief, striking him. Fortunately, it did no harm, as it was blocked by his armour’s over-shield.

Cooper placed himself between Chief, and where the shot had come from, up the tower.

He fired a Pulse Blade from BT’s left shoulder pod, a knife that emitted a high frequency pulse of sound as it struck. The Sonar equipment within his helmet then displayed the crouched and hidden forms of the three sniper rifle wielding Jackals that the sound pulse had discovered.

Unfortunately, with their vantage and cover, there was nothing he could do about them, unless they decided to reveal themselves.

Another Ghost rounded the corner, firing away at the Master Chief’s now rather damaged vehicle. Cooper whipped around, firing a shot blindly at it. The shot, through pure luck, struck the back of it, blasting the Grunt pilot straight from its seat.

Jack blinked in surprise.

“I uh… got you a new Ghost?” he claimed.

“Nice shot,” commented Chief with amusement, exiting his Ghost in favour of the new one.

“Third core isn’t far,” Cortana said, bringing them back to the mission at hand, “Let’s get that shield down.”

The gunfire had been steadily dying down, and they had yet to see any Prometheans. Had the Covenant driven them all off? It certainly seemed likely. The Covenant had both numbers, and firepower to their name, though from what Jack had seen, they weren’t very intelligent. He had noticed that quite a few had repeated basic patterns when fighting and moving, which made them very easy to deal with.

They reached the last core containment, dealt with the Covenant easily, and Chief destroyed the core.

“That’ll do it,” Cortana said, “Shields should be down. Get up to that beam!”

Then Cooper noticed the Banshee coming in for another strafe.

He landed a shot with the 40mm cannon before being forced to bring up the Vortex Shield to protect against the plasma based counter-attack. Then the Banshee fired a large, slow moving, green ball of plasma at him, before pulling off the strafe and turning to escape.

Not taking any chances, Cooper dashed away. A loud _woosh _sounded as compressed air was released from many cavities on BT’s chassis, boosting them out of the line of fire of the streaking green orb. It struck the ground moments later, releasing a large explosion and expelling super-heated plasma in every direction.

A smart move, but the Banshee pilot had made the mistake of getting too close. The two remaining shots that Cooper needed to land in order to confirm a missile lock were all too easy. He fired the short slavo and watched with dark amusement as the Sangheili tried to escape.

It activated the Banshee’s boost and streaked away at high speeds, six highly mobile missiles slowly gaining on it. In a last ditch attempt, the pilot aimed straight up, rolling as he did. The rockets had no trouble, and cut it from the air with six closely timed detonations.

“You head up the tower, Master Chief,” Cooper directed, “I’ll keep the other Banshee off your back, and I’ll meet you up there, just like last time.”

“Understood,” Chief responded, and made way to the ramp, keeping his eye out for the snipers that had been spotted earlier.

Actually, he didn’t have to look for them, did he?

“Cooper,” he said over the radio, as he made his way up the ramp to the top of the tower, “Can you put a Sonar Pulse above my position?”

“Got it,” he replied immediately, sending the dart, as requested.

The blade sunk into the forerunner structure, and sent out the sonic pulse. Cortana received it, and nearly instantaneously converted it into a visual outline of three Jackals, stationed above him, looking down, but away from where he was.

He rushed up, and quickly put them down before they could become an issue, using the Suppressor for the short engagement range, before continuing up to the where the Lightbridge was located.

“Ready when you are, Pilot,” he informed over comms.

“Coming right up,” Cooper responded, exiting BT’s chassis, and letting BT wrap his large, mechanical hand around his midsection, preparing the throw.

“Chief!” Cortana warned, “Banshee! Get down!”

Chief ducked behind a half height wall as the last Banshee strafed him, approaching from the opposite side of the tower than BT and Cooper.

“Go BT! Now!” Cooper ordered, pulling him only available Anti-Armour weapon from his back, a Charge Rifle.

“Good luck,” BT said, and threw him high into the air.

He spotted the Banshee as he flew into the sky, and held down the trigger of the Charge Rifle, slowly charging the powerful laser.

Cooper reached the apex of the throw, and took aim. The Charge Rifle fired, a bright yellow beam of energy and heat cutting straight through the Banshee’s frontal armour, and out the other side.

The Banshee fell as Cooper did, sporting a large hole near the centre of its forward armour, although, unlike him, it missed the tower, and plummeted to the surface much further below.

“Nice shot,” Master Chief commended, standing back up from his crouched position in cover, as he observed the Pilot’s weapon. It was not dissimilar from a Spartan Laser, though it was significantly smaller, but less powerful. He doubted it could do similar damage to a more heavily armoured target, like a Wraith.

“Thanks,” Cooper said, smiling slightly beneath his helmet, “Now, let’s get this beam down.”

Master Chief nodded, and once again took the lead across the Lightbridge, and down the keyhole shaped hallway to the elevator.

“_UNCS _Infinity_ to Survivor_,” came another transmission, in the best clarity they had yet heard, the image of a man’s face now much more distinguishable, “Forward Unto Daw-w-w-wn_. We’re reading a faint IFF tag near the pl-planetary core. Do you read?”_

“That planet’s core?” Cortana asked in shock, “They know we’re here! _Infinity_, this is UNSC AI Cortana! Do not approach Forerunner planet! Repeat; do _not_ approach-“

“Infinity _to UNSC asset; we read you, but you’re breaking up!_” came the transmission, before the man turned to his left “_Helm, increase speed by point-seven. Get us in there._”

“Negative _Infinity_!” Cortana shouted, “Do not enter the planet!”

“_If you can hear us,_” he continued, “_keep transmitting._”

“No! Chief, you’ve got to get that beam down _now_!” Cortana ordered sharply.

Chief ran for the control switch and grabbed the handle, pulling it out half a metre, rotating it a quarter turn right, pulling another half-metre, rotating an eighth turn left, another pull, another eighth turn left, then finally, slammed it back in, and shut off the beam.

“Cortana to _Infinity_; do you copy? Come in, _Infinity_!” she said, “The interference is gone, but none of our transmitters are strong enough.”

“You said that satellite was acting like a relay right? Can you route us up there?” Cooper asked.

“Already done,” Cortana said as a new portal opened just ahead of them, “Straight through that portal!”

Together, they ran through the portal, back to the hub room they had been in earlier, and kept running, straight up towards a new portal.

“BT,” Cortana addressed, “I can’t find a portal location large enough to get you to the satellite yet. Just make your way back to the portal that got you there, and I’ll keep searching.”

“Understood. Pilot Cooper, Master Chief; Good luck.”

“Thanks BT,” Cooper returned.

“Once we’re on the satellite,” Cortana began again, “there’s bound to be a central control point.”

“The Covenant are heading there too!” Cooper observed.

“This doesn’t make any sense!” Cortana exclaimed as they went through the portal, “Why would they care about a broadcast relay?”

“We’ll handle them,” Chief started, “you just find us that control node.”

They’d arrived on a long, wide, walkway, with the satellite ahead of them. It was a large sphere, roughly 40 metres in diameter, made of large plates that decreased in size and increased in number the lower they went. Between each plate, the core could be seen; a bright yellow, magma looking sphere just underneath the plates.

“How long until _Infinity_ hit’s the gravity well?” Cooper asked, as a Phantom, a Covenant dropship, stopped at the end of the walkway and started depositing troops.

“A minute or two _max_,” Cortana answered.

Not waiting for the Covenant to get a foothold ahead of them, Master Chief began firing upon them as they dropped from the large vehicle.

“The Covenant are making a push for something on the far side of the satellite,” Cortana said as Cooper activated the Cloak unit within his armour, and he shimmered out of visibility, so he could safely get to a better firing position.

Chief watched in fascination as the Pilot flickered twice, then nearly completely vanished from sight. The only thing leaving him visible was a slight discolouration, as though the space he occupied had been just slightly brightened. There was no shimmer in the air, and it didn’t seem to be affected in the slightest by his movement, unlike the camouflage units the Covenant had access to.

With how quickly the Pilot was already moving, having kicked off a wall and into the air, he doubted many but another Spartan would be able to spot him.

He continued firing into their quickly thinning ranks as the Pilot began firing, surprisingly, still in Cloak. It seemed that not even _gunfire_ could deter the camouflage.

Chief stopped shooting when the Pilot leapt into close quarters, the few remaining Grunts screaming in alarm as a new foe suddenly revealed himself just a few metres away, already firing.

Cooper decimated the few that remained, and Cortana pointed them to two routes, one going around to each side. They picked the left, pressed a button to open the door, and ran up a long ramp.

At the top of the ramp was a battlefield. The Covenant and Prometheans had set up on either side, the Covenant closest to them, and were too busy attacking one another to notice the two new arrivals.

They quickly fired upon the Covenant while their backs were still turned, managing to kill most before they realised the threat behind them.

Cooper decided that, with their limited time, he’d use his Charge Rifle to dispatch the Knights, despite his very limited ammunition for it. He charged and fired a shot, and was pleased to see that it killed the Knight that had been approaching them in a single hit.

With all the enemies dealt with, they continued up and around to the opposite side of the satellite.

“Guys!” Cortana began, “You need to hear this!”

“_We’re detecting a slight gravimetric response near the planetary entrance,_” came a female voice, “_Suggest altering approach vector; Four-Five-Kilo dash Seven-Five-Zero-Kilo dash One-Two-Kilo._”

“They’re not diverting from the opening! Hurry!” Cortana exclaimed.

They reached the top, and found three Elites in a standoff against three Knights and a turret.

Thinking quick, Cooper tossed a Firestar onto the turret, and let the burning thermite take it out of the equation before it could start doing serious damage, before unstrapping his Charge Rifle and taking aim at the Knights.

Meanwhile, Master Chief engaged the Elites. He tossed a frag greanade at their feet, and they dived away in a panic, two directly away from him, and one straight to the side. He drew the Plasma Pistol he had retrieved earlier, and held down the trigger to ready an over-charged shot, before firing it at the closest Elite. The Elite, still recovering from the roll, couldn’t dodge, and the large ball of plasma collided with its over-shield, and immediately stripped it bare, allowing the Chief to finish it off with a precise shot to the head with his Magnum.

Cooper, having finished the Knights, turned to assist. He activated his Cloak, and sprinted around the cover the Elites were using. He fired his Scattershot into the flank of an Elite from near point-blank just as his Cloak’s charge burned out, and he returned to visibility. The other Elite turned, a testament to its impressive reflexes, but was met with a kick to the face. It stumbled back, and Chief followed up, spear tackling it around the middle and bringing it to the floor. He then drew the large knife from his breastplate, and plunged it into the Elite’s neck.

“Over there!” Cortana alerted, “There’s the control node!”

A blue ping marked the twin short podiums, just twenty metres away from where they stood.

They ran to it, and Chief quickly placed his hands upon the podiums.

“_Infinity_; this is Sierra One-One-Seven of the UNSC _Forward Unto Dawn_. Do you copy?” Chief said.

“Infinity_; this is Sierra One-One-Seven of the UNSC-_“ the satellite repeated with multiple, overlapping voices, both high and low in pitch.

Chief paused for a moment, waiting for a response, looking to the satellite, its edges shimmering like an incredible heat wave was emanating from its surface.

“_Infinity_, do you read?” Chief asked again.

“Infinity_, do you read_?” the satellite repeated.

The satellite slowly began to rise, and all at once, all the sounds of combat suddenly ceased.

“Chief… Chief, let go of the contacts,” Cortana ordered anxiously.

He looked on for another moment, before jerking his hands off the podiums and taking a couple steps backwards, drawing his Lightrifle.

Cooper tightened his grip on the Scattershot. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he felt undeniably… _off_.

“Find us an exit,” he told Cortana.

“Don’t wait around on my account!” she replied.

Chief turned and grabbed Cooper’s arm, before pulling them both over the edge towards a platform a few metres below. They crouched behind a short wall just as the satellite released a pulse of force, washing over them powerfully, even behind cover.

They peaked back over the wall to watch as the plating around the bottom of the sphere shifted and moved away and upwards, and a small platform, with eight blade like extensions rising above it lowered from within it, a humanoid figure crouched upon it.

The eight extensions slowly lowered, until they were parallel, then the figure began to stand. They watched as it stretched, and pieces of armour floated through the air, and began forming over its skin.

“So fades the great harvest of my betrayal,” it said, its voice many deep, overlapping tones.

It turned left, still facing away from the hiding duo, and waved its arm at a group of fighting Elites and Knights lazily. As they watched, the Knights’ colours shifted, from blue, to a sinister orange, matching the figure’s own armour. The Elites, instead of drawing their arms, dropped them, and _bowed_.

“Even these _beasts_ recognise what you were oblivious to _Humans_,” it said, “Your nobility has blinded you, as ever.”

The short wall they stood behind began breaking out into patches of orange as it slowly corroded away.

Cooper quickly lifted three fingers, and counted down, and together they stood and began firing upon the figure.

Or that was the plan, at least. The figure trust a hand at them as they stood, and an invisible force wrapped around them, pulling their arms to the side, and dragging them into the air, unable to move.

They were pulled by the invisible force towards the figure. It was clearly alien. Skin was present on a slightly avian face, but was lacking on the side of its head and neck, revealing the muscle underneath. Its face lacked a nose, and its eyes were sunken, while short fangs protruded from its closed mouth.

“The Librarian left little to chance, didn’t she?” he said in his eerie voice, “Turning my own guardians-” he turned to the Knights below, “my own _world_… against me. But what _hubris_ to believe she could protect her _pets_ from me forever.”

He observed the pair for a moment, before turning back and scrutinising the Elites.

“If you haven’t mastered _these_ primitive,” he said, motioning at the Elites with a tilt of his head, “then Man has not yet attained the Mantle. Your ascendance may yet be prevented.”

The creature tightened his invisible grip around them tauntingly.

“Time was your ally, Humans, but now it has abandoned you. The Forerunners have _returned_.”

Armour plating spread over, and covered his face with a helmet.

“This tomb… is now yours.”

He flicked his arm back, and they were flung away, into a wall, before falling to the ground.

They slowly pulled themselves to their feet as the platform began to lift, returning the creature back into the large sphere, large trails of red and orange energy circling it.

“Slipspace rupture!” Cortana said in alarm, “Move!”

They turned and ran as hard as they could away, before diving as they reached the end of the walkway, and the sphere went into slipspace.

* * *

Cooper pulled his eyelids apart. It took significantly more effort than it should have, and that worried him.

He stumbled to his feet, and spotted Chief lying next to him.

“Cooper!” Cortana began, “We’ve gotta get out of here! Get Chief up!”

He nodded groggily, and bent down to take a hold of Chief’s armoured wrist. He pulled, but found that the Master Chief was incredibly heavy with all that armour.

“Chief, please! We’ve gotta go!” Cortana said as he began to wake.

Chief pushed himself up, and got to his knees, then his feet.

“That… Didact,” she began, “He manipulated _Infinity_’s signal to get us to release him!”

“What’s happening?” Chief asked.

“Moving the satellite into slipspace destabilised the core,” she answered.

Two Phantoms, in their too hasty attempt to escape, crashed into one another, and then crashed once more onto the ground ahead of them.

“The Didact’s leaving. We’ve gotta find a portal out of here before the whole _network_ collapses!” she continued as they began making their way forward.

“What about BT?” Cooper asked, concerned for his companion.

“Already sent him to the surface. I found a portal point up there, but it’s no use if we can’t find a portal to get us there.”

They stepped over a short ridge, and found a multitude of Ghosts had fallen from the crashed Phantoms.

“Grab one of those Ghosts. Sorry Jack, but you’re just gonna have to hang on.”

“What? Why? There’s plenty here,” he said, gesturing at the other available vehicles as Master Chief activated his Ghost.

“Just trust me,” Cortana pleaded.

Cooper nodded, and jumped onto the back of the Chief’s Ghost, grabbing the giant of a man’s shoulders.

“You good?” Cortana asked.

He shifted around for another moment, then nodded.

“Alright, hang on. I’m gonna channel energy from your shields to overdrive the Ghost’s boost.”

She finished, and Chief activated the boost, accelerating away at an incredible rate. The boost, also, did not seem to be running out.

With the first moment of acceleration, Cooper held tight to Chief’s shoulders, but quickly used his Jump-Kit to stabilise himself. It wasn’t the worst thing he’d had to hang on to, ironically. A dashing Titan was never an easy thing to keep hold of.

As they boosted along, the ground rumbled, and pieces of rock started flying away from the ground as it began to collapse.

“Emergency broadcast from _Infinity_!” Cortana said as they boosted though a cave system.

“_Fleetcom; this is _Infinity!” came the transmission, “_We are encountering and unidentifiable gravimetric disturbance and are being pulled _inside _a planet of _Forerunner _origin!_”

They flew out of the cave, only to find their surroundings had deteriorated even more. Walls to either side of the pass were being pushed in, crushing the rock under it and sending it flying into the sky.

“_Possible contact with UNSC _Forward Unto Dawn!” the transmission continued, “_Jettisoning complete log beacons as last known!_”

They followed the pass left, and it opened out, only to collapse underneath them.

“Cortana, we need to get up there,” Chief said.

“It’s not like I can get out and push!” she retorted, as they sailed through the open air to reach the next part of their path.

They hit the ground hard, but the Ghost’s levitation was thankfully enough to prevent them from splatting against the rock.

“Portal!” Cortana cheered, “Up ahead!”

And indeed, they could spot it. Only thing was, it was suspended in the air.

Chief pushed the Ghost harder, and ramped of into the air, and straight through the portal.

A flash of light later, and the Ghost, and three occupants were on the surface, heading towards a cliff at high speed.

“Woah cowboy!”

Cooper immediately kicked off, and doubled jumped to bring himself to a near complete stop.

Chief followed his lead, jamming the brakes of the Ghost on, and kicking off it.

But it wasn’t enough.

“BT!” Cooper screamed.

A large metal hand wrapped around the Master Chief just as he slid off the edge after the Ghost.

“I’ve got you,” BT said, pulling Chief back, and placing him back on solid ground.

Cooper gave a loud huff of relief. “Great job, buddy,” he said, giving the large mech a thumbs-up, to which BT returned, before striding over, lifting him up, and placing Cooper back within his chassis.

“There! Look!” Cortana pointed out.

Through the dense cloud, came something Jack wasn’t sure he believed.

It was a ship. That much he could understand. What he was struggling with was comprehending its size. Had it been place beside those gigantic, kilometre long Covenant vessels, it would have dwarfed them many times over.

While the Covenant vessels carried a sort of smooth beauty, all sleek and smooth curves, this monstrosity was built for function. Sharp angles and aggressive edges defined its structure, in a (very) rough cylindrical shape.

“_Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is the captain of the UNSC _Infinity_. Unknown entity has seized control of our ship! We’re without power, and on collision course with an unidentified Forerunner planet! We are going down!_ _I repeat; we are going down! Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!_”

Ship passed over them, and even at its incredible altitude, the wind currents still nearly swept them off their feet.

“Track its decent,” Chief ordered quickly.

“Marking,” Cortana responded, “Impact predicted 77.8 kilometres due north.”

“Confirmed,” agreed BT.

With another shudder, the sphere containing the Didact rose over the cliffs behind them, before it turned, did a brief scan, and shot off at hyper-sonic speeds after the descending _Infinity_.

“You _know_ where he’s heading,” Cortana predicted.

“Same place we are,” Chief answered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So another 8k words, and I’m only through one mission. God damn. And there are what, ten of these? Thank god I skipped two lol. I’m joking. I honestly really enjoy writing this, and I’m especially proud of the Pilot combat. Yes, ‘A fan’, I saw your review, (I read all of them), and totally agree. Titans are super OP, so I hope I gave Cooper enough ground time to shine.
> 
> Also, I decided to upload all my works to AO3, as those of you reading on AO3 obviously know, under the same name, so if that’s your preferred platform, you can change over to it.
> 
> Sorry this took so long to do, I decided to take a break from writing to prevent burnout, but now I’m back in the action! So I’ll also be putting up a poll on my profile for how often this gets updated, from alternating weekly with my main fic, to once every four weeks. i.e. 1:1, 1:2, or 1:3 chapters of this, to chapters of my main fic.
> 
> Sorry AO3 readers, I don’t think you can put up polls on here. If there is, and I’m just dumb, let me know, and I’ll put it up as soon as I see it.
> 
> That’s all for this chapter, I’ll see you all again in, at most, 4 weeks!
> 
> Yours sincerely, H3ctic.


	3. Chapter 3

Cooper maneuvered BT under a large, nearly horizontal tree trunk, careful not to hit it by mistake, with BT’s large chassis.

He and the Master Chief had been moving through the thick jungle for over an hour, and it had been slow going. Fortunately, they had not run into any Covenant or Prometheans in their trek, and had instead spent their time learning of each other.

He hadn’t realized it earlier, but Cortana had told him it was the year 2557. He was from 2721. He had technically gone back in time 164 years. Despite that, the technological differences weren’t as large as he reasoned they should be. Cooper reasoned that centuries of war between the IMC and Militia had significantly stunted his universes technological growth, while the UNSC had been forced to advance with the appearance of the Covenant.

As they say; necessity is the mother of invention.

Cooper and Cortana had spent a large amount of time discussing how each society could benefit from each other. Self-contained plasma weaponry, technology that had eluded the understanding of the UNSC for decades, could easily be produced with the help of the information present in BT’s storage.

Another thing that Cortana believed the UNSC would profit greatly from, was Jump-Drives. Pelicans, the standard troop deployment vehicle they used, were much too small to be outfitted with a Slipspace drive, and even if they could supply the massive energy demands, they would not be able to safely jump from atmospheric conditions. Jump-Drives had no such issues. Their relatively low energy cost meant they were outfitted on nearly every craft that could leave the ground, and were indeed commonplace on dropships used by Pilots. Cortana believed that being able to nearly instantaneously transport troops to and from a planet’s surface would be invaluable against the Covenant, who were restricted to physical flight, just as they were.

While his universe may have the edge in technology, he believed that the UNSC was most certainly more competent with their troops. From what he had heard, he doubted that a squad of Riflemen would even be able to hold a candle to an equal amount of UNSC Marines. Then there were ODSTs. While he was no stranger to orbital drops, the merits of the elite forces informed him that the name was more than just an acronym. Then there were the Spartans. He had no doubt that the Chief was better than he, but he believed in the urban conditions Pilots often found themselves in, that they would be able to go toe to toe with Spartan IVs. With Titans though, well, a Spartan wouldn’t be able to do much, no matter how well trained they are.

“Stay low,” Cortana warned, “Covenant sortie heading this way.”

Cooper ducked back behind the thick foliage and watched as three Phantoms, and a number more Banshee’s flew overhead towards the downed Infinity. Hovering ominously above it, the Didact’s ship scanned the vessel with a wide horizontal plane of orange light.

“The ship looks intact,” Cooper observed.

“Something tells me that’s only because the Didact wanted it that way,” Chief speculated.

The radio crackled slightly.

“This is Lasky to UNSC Infinity. We’re up to our necks in bad guys here; does anyone read?” came the voice. Different to what they had heard when they were still within the planet. They were also male, but sounded significantly younger.

“This is Sierra-117 of the Forward Unto Dawn. We’re on station, ready to assist,” Chief replied quickly.

“Negative copy, sounded like you said ‘Forward Unto Dawn’? Come again-” he returned, his voice cutting out into static.

“Signal’s bouncing in and out,” Cortana explained, “I can’t clean it up.”

Master Chief took a moment to think, then spoke. “Light up their Friend-Or-Foe tags,” he instructed, “We’re gonna need something to zero in on.”

“Got it. I’m seeing numerous IFF tags below the tree line. Painting the nearest one on your HUDs,” Cortana said, as a blue marker appeared, 183 metres away.

“I am detecting movement around the marked target,” BT informed, “Pilot Cooper. I suggest you disembark. My large chassis will only impede you, should this become a combative engagement. Furthermore, I may trigger a hostile reaction from friendly targets.”

“Right,” Cooper agreed, slipping free from BT onto the soft ground.

“That scans the same one we saw on the Dawn,” Chief observed.

”Is it?” Cooper asked, curious.

“It is,” Cortana confirmed, “Except now, the Didact is free to handle it personally.”

They walked towards the marker, BT following a dozen metres behind, ready to assist in engagements without getting in their way.

The radio crackled again, “Infinity to Commander Lasky. We’ve lost contact with your Pelicans. Report in!”

It was the first voice. He sounded irritated, as though affronted by ‘Lasky’ being unable to comply, despite his dangerous circumstances. Jack already did not like the Infinity’s captain.

“They must not have received his distress call,” Chief speculated.

They continued toward the marker, walking down a sharp slope, then underneath a low overhang of foliage. They reached the end of it, just a dozen metres from the ping, when they saw three Knights standing over the corpses of a squad of Marines.

Cooper and Chief immediately began firing at them, but they all managed to portal away before any could be taken down.

After a quick scan of the surrounding area, Chief spoke. “Lasky?” he asked, hoping that the young commander was not among the bodies.

“One of them’s an officer,” Cortana said, not able to answer his question as he would have liked. “Check his IFF tag.”

He walked quickly to the officer’s body, and picked up the dog tags containing all the digital information he required.

“The tag I.D.s him as Jimenez, Paolo J.” Cortana informed.

“So Lasky’s still out there,” Cooper offered, as BT climbed over the tunnel of foliage and branches to join them in the small clearing.

“Right,” Cortana agreed.

Chief stooped down, and scooped a rifle from the ground beside the fallen Marine. A DMR. “Cooper. Try this out,” he guided, handing him the weapon.

The Pilot didn’t have access to a weapon that could reasonably kill Prometheans from any range other than ‘point-blank’. While the DMR used ammunition like that of the MA5D, the assault rifle he had left behind after his second engagement with the Prometheans, the DMR had an extra 200 millimetres of barrel over the MA5D, which would ultimately result in much faster projectiles with superior armour penetration. He suspected that rounds fired from this weapon would net similar results to that of his Magnum.

The Pilot accepted it, and looked it over. He removed the magazine, racked the slide, and caught the full round the weapon ejected when he did so, sliding it back into the magazine after inspecting it, and then the magazine back into the weapon. He racked the slide once more, chambering a round, and fully readying the weapon for combat.

“Great,” he said, before turning to his Titan and tossing him his R201. “Hold onto this for me, would you BT?”

BT caught it deftly, and slid the weapon into a small compartment to the side of his faceplate.

They then continued along the available path, down a small slope. At the bottom awaited a cluster of Crawlers, which began firing upon them soon after spotting them.

Chief immediately returned fire, moving quickly behind a multi-metre thick tree trunk for cover, while Cooper pushed himself into a run, before dropping into a slide, using his momentum and the remainder of the slope to move quickly to a short ledge looking over the Promethean forces.

Cooper took careful aim, and fired, watching in satisfaction as the head of a Crawler crumpled and detonated with the force of the high velocity projectile, a loud crack and thin vapour trail signifying the successful hit. He didn’t let it distract him for long, and quickly located a new target as the Chief peaked from cover to assist in the conflict.

Cooper looked on in amazement as the Chief decimated their numbers. It seemed that in the time that Cooper took to find a new target, the Master Chief had already dispatched two more of them. Chief seemed to spend barely more time than the duration of the burst on each target, before finding a new foe, and locking his sights on them by the time the Lightrifle was able to fire again.

Cooper surveyed the area quickly, and finding no more Prometheans, turn to the Master Chief.

Chief completed his own sweep, and signalled them forward with a forward wave.

They began moving forward again, but stopped a moment later, weapons coming up as they heard the roar of a Knight, and the low whine of a Watcher.

Cooper looked around quickly, taking stock of his surroundings. He could see above there was a series of wide, horizontal branches which he could use as walkways. He waved to get Chief’s attention, then pointed to himself, Me, he tilted his head back, Up. He pointed at Chief, You, then tilted his head forward, Down, then lifted his hand in a fist, Stay there.

Chief nodded, and slowly made his way forward, while Cooper quickly shouldered his DMR, ran at a vertical trunk and scrambled up it with a boost from his Jump-Kit. He moved quietly along the branch he made it to, before stooping into a crouch and surveying the Prometheans ahead.

Chief waited below, and left of him, by a circular opening in the thick trees, ready to move to the next clearing and engage. He watched as Cooper lifted his left arm from his weapon, and started gesturing to him.

Three fingers up, ring finger held down by thumb, Seven. He lowered his arm by his side, and lifted his palm upward in a cupping gesture, Dogs. First finger up, One. He moved his hand up and rested it on his bicep, Leader. First finger up again, One, then he flattened his palm and flapped it slightly. A Watcher, he must mean.

Cooper looked back to see Chief nod, before he lifted his left hand just above his head, palm flat and facing down, Cover, then he pointed a single finger at himself, Me. Cooper nodded back, and then Chief raised a hand, his thumb, forefinger, and middle finger up. His thumb folded in. His middle finger went down.

Cooper stood as Chief clenched his fist, quickly finding a target, a Crawler, and firing at it. He missed its head, but it was staggered, and he was able to take another shot as the attention of every Promethean snapped to him.

That was their first mistake. Chief rounded the bend and began cutting them to pieces, landing shot after shot with deadly accuracy while their focus remained on the Pilot. Their attention began to shift to the new combatant, but Cooper continued firing upon them, killing many with accurate fire. As Chief finished the last Crawler, Cooper set his sights on the Watcher. He struck it once, followed by a burst from Chief, and one more shot finished it off.

All that remained now was the Knight, which tried to duck back into cover as it started taking hits, but Cooper fished a Firestar from his belt, and lobbed it. His aim was true, and it struck the Knight in the helmet, where it burst into an adhesive pool of burning thermite, carving through its shield, then armour, before the Knight burst into burning orange polygons, signifying its death.

After a short sweep to make sure they hadn’t missed anyone, they began moving forward again, only to be stopped by Cortana.

“Hold up,” she said, “What was that he dropped on the ground over there?” she asked, highlighting a strange, roughly ‘V’ shaped box that sat on the ground where the Knight had been killed.

Chief walked up and inspected it. It looked like an Ability Module, like his Hardlight Shield. He removed the Hardlight Shield module, and replaced it with the new one, and waited for a moment so Cortana could integrate it to his suit.

He activated it, and the world turned a dull blue, while Cooper turned bright green. He turned to his right, and despite the surrounding trees that should have obscured his vision, was able to see dull red Crawlers in the next clearing. The ability ran out of charge, and his vision returned to normal, the Crawlers vanishing from visibility.

“This must be what they’ve been using to see through the fog,” Cortana concluded.

“What is it?” Cooper asked.

“Some kind of high frequency Sonar and infrared Thermal vision augmenter,” Cortana informed.

“Got it. You lead the way Chief,” Cooper responded.

They continued forward, before stopping before a short drop, the area below them coated with a thick fog. Cooper could see numerous bright points, lit with a soft orange glow, within the fog. They were almost certainly Prometheans.

Chief activated the new Ability Module, and the Promethean forces all became visible. He fired on them immediately, aiming to kill as many as he could before the Ability went into a cooldown period. Cooper engaged with him, firing at the vague shapes moving in the fog. A few minutes later, and they emerged victorious, dropping down to the fog covered lower area.

“We’ve got another IFF tag on the far side of this thicket,” Cortana told them, as their path became impassable, save for an arm of alien flora that stemmed from the ground and continued upwards in a lazy incline. They used it as a ramp, and started wrapping back around the main trunk.

They found the tag, belonging to another dead marine, laying down between the tree and ground. Cooper scavenged the ammunition from his rifle while Chief inspected his tag.

“You’ll want to listen to this,” Cortana told them, “Playing most recent recording.”

“We should get eyes out there looking for the others.” It was Lasky.

“Peters!” A female voice this time, “You heard commander Lasky.”

“CFB ma’am,” responded a new man, presumably Peters, “Bulldogs! On me! We’re going for a walk.”

With the recording finished, Cortana began speaking again, “Lasky’s been through here, recently, by the timestamps.”

“Then we must be close,” Cooper mused.

“Right.” Chief agreed, “Let’s keep moving.”

They did, encountering only a handful of Crawlers before Cortana spoke up once more.

“I’ve got another IFF tag,” she said, a marker appearing on their HUDs, “but as far as I can tell, we’re moving into a choke point. This may end up as a dead end.”

Together they walked to the marker, where they found a Forerunner structure, seemingly set into the trees and ground. The floor of the structure was too high for Chief to reach. He started moving around, looking for a new way up, before Cooper stopped him.

Cooper made a Jump-Kit assisted jump, pushed against the Forerunner structure, and jumped again, clambering to the floor level of the structure. He turned around, and offered a hand to the Chief. Chief ran at the wall and jumped, taking two steps up it to reach the Pilot’s outstretched hand.

Cooper grunted in exertion as he started a large amount of Chief’s weight settled in his hand. He was incredibly grateful for the physical augmentations his body had slowly been undergoing, thanks to the nanites the Jump-Kit had injected into his bloodstream when he initially acquired it from Lastimosa. He pulled with all his strength, and managed to lift Chief up enough so that he could pull himself the rest of the way up.

“My god,” he groaned, “How much does that thing weigh?” he asked, waving at Chief’s armour.

Chief felt a tug at the corner of his lips, but remained focused on the task at hand.

“That’s the Friend-Or-Foe tag, but where’s whoever it belonged to?” Cortana asked as Chief inspected the card. “Playing most recent file.”

“XO! We got it!”

“Move! Move! Move!”

“Light’s green!”

“C’mon, crank it!”

“Palmer,” barked Lasky, “Get your folks inside!”

“Yes sir!” a female, Palmer, responded, “FOURS! Go!”

Cooper moved beside Chief, looking at the large triangular wall that he believed may actually be a door.

Suddenly, marker after marker appeared on their HUDs, just on the other side of the wall.

“Multiple I.D.s! They’re friendlies!” Cortana cheered.

Most of the wall, which, as Cooper had guessed, was actually a door, slid upwards, while smaller triangular sections at the bottom corners slid away to the side. As it opened, light spilled into the dark room, revealing multiple figures, wearing armour similar to that of the Chief’s. They must be Spartans.

Three of them stepped out into the light, and immediately levelled their weapons at Cooper.

“Drop your weapon!” barked the helmetless woman, Palmer.

“Whoa! Take it easy!” Cooper returned quickly, lifting an arm off the rifle and showing them an open palm in an effort to placate them.

“Drop your weapon!” Palmer repeated.

“Stand down,” Chief ordered, voice low, but firm. “He’s with me.”

The Spartans lowered their weapon hesitantly, watching Cooper closely.

“Stand down,” echoed Palmer, “Continue sweep,” she directed, not taking her eyes off him.

An unarmoured man walked towards the pair, look Cooper over curiously, before he began speaking with the Chief.

“Afraid we’re gonna have to give you an IOU on that welcome back party,” he said, a small amount of amusement in his voice. “Tom Lasky, first officer of the Infinity. Never thought I’d see you again,” he said, shaking Chief’s hand, before he turned his attention back to the Pilot. “Who’s your friend here?”

“Jack Cooper,” he introduced, outstretching his hand, and giving Lasky a handshake.

Cortana’s hologram appeared over Chief’s shoulder. “It’s a long story,” she explained, “Just know he’s helped us out, and he’s very skilled.”

Lasky nodded in acceptance, “That’s high praise coming from an AI, Cooper,” he began, “Not going to lie, we could use all the help we can get.”

Jack noted with amusement how similar his and Commander Briggs’ remarks had been.

“I’ll do what I can,” he offered in return, receiving a grateful smile from Lasky.

A shudder ran through the structure beneath their feet.

“What was that?” Lasky asked quickly.

“Don’t worry,” Cooper assured, “That’s just BT. How far away are you buddy?”

“I will be visible in a moment,” came BT’s instant reply.

True to his word, a large metal hand came to rest on top of a large trunk. A moment after, the 7 metre tall robot nimbly vaulted over the thicket, and came full into view, shaking the ground as he landed.

The Spartans quickly levelled their weapons at BT, but lowered them again at Chief’s hasty command.

“Pilot Cooper,” BT addressed, “It is good to see you are unharmed.”

“What in the hell?” Lasky said.

“Like I said; long story,” Cortana repeated.

They turned as a voice came through the radio.

“-ground forces are ordered to return to Infinity immediately!” came the voice of Infinity’s captain.

“Commander!” one of the marines within the structure called, “Radio’s hot!”

“BT, watch the doors,” Cooper quickly commanded, “Motion sensor at max range. Fire a pulse at anything you suspected is a target.”

“Understood.”

Lasky quickly turned and strode to the radio, with Cooper and Chief, as well as the other Spartans, following behind him.

“-respond to comm… On what frequency? What frequency dammit!”

“Infinity, this is Commander Lasky. Pelican recon teams are down. Repeat; all birds are down. We’ve got numerous casualties and require immediate assistance, over.”

“Finally… Did you get the coordinates to that gravity well?”

“Affirmative sir, but we’re gonna need a bus outta here-“

“Make it happen.”

Lasky grimaced, but didn’t respond.

“You were sent on a scouting run, in the middle of an attack on the ship,” Cortana said, her voice incredulous.

“The Captain thought Infinity could provide us cover and hold off the attack at the same time,” Lasky said.

“Sir,” Palmer stepped forward, “We’ll never get the wounded back to the ship on foot.”

Lasky’s eyes turned pained, before he let out a tense sigh.

“I don’t know if it’s too early to ask for a favour,” he began, looking to the Chief, then to Cooper, “but we’re gonna run out of breathing room here real quick.” The man forced a half smile, “I don’t suppose you’re any good at clearing LZs?” he asked.

“On occasion,” Chief returned, “I’ll send the all-clear once the area’s secured.”

“BT, can you get around to the other side of the structure?” Cooper asked. He’d much rather have access to BT’s impressive firepower if it was possible.

“I will be able to climb over the structure. I will meet you on the other side shortly.”

“Great. See you there.”

“Alright!” Palmer barked, “Seal ‘er up!” and behind her, the large doors slowly slid back down, locking away the sight of BT as he began to climb.

“Over here sir!” called a marine with a strong Australian accent near the back of the room, “Blimey, it’s good to see you again Chief,” he continued, walking forward and shaking hands with him.

“Likewise Priv- Sargent Dubbo. You made it off the Ark alright?” Chief corrected, noting the increase of rank on the marine he had fought alongside with, on numerous occasions.

“I did,” he said, leading them through the winding hallways, “I made it back fine an’ dandy. Took part in your 21-gun salute, actually, but I knew you were still alive an’ kickin’.” He looked back and grinned, “And what-do-ya-know? Here you are! Right, now let’s go get this LZ cleared, yeah?”

“Sounds good Sargent. Lead the way.”

“You two!” he called, pointing at a pair of marines, “With me! We’re going to get this LZ cleared!”

The marines fell into step behind them as they reached the exit to the complex, taking the short ramp down, and stepping through the opening door into the light.

“A topographical scan of the area shows a break in the foliage north of here,” Cortana told them, “Should be big enough to land a dropship for evac.”

“Contacts!” Dubbo warned, “Get to cover marines!”

Cooper immediately activated his Cloak, and vanished from visibility, to the surprise of the following marines, if the “Holy hell!” was anything to go by. He jumped against the left wall and sprinted along it, before jumping to the right to gain height, then off towards a Crawler that was sitting perpendicular to the ground on a tall trunk.

His boot connected with the Crawlers head, and he felt it collapse beneath him. He then used his remaining momentum to carry himself upward, so that he squatted on the trunk, where he began firing at the Watchers that represented the most threat to the Chief and marines.

Chief stepped in front of a marine, withering blow to his overshield that would likely have killed the marine. He returned fire at the offending Alpha Crawler, killing it with a burst from the Lightrifle, then directing the marines to a line of sandbags just out from the exit hallway.

With the Crawlers dealt with, the Marines focused on keeping the Watcher occupied while Chief and Cooper worked on the Knight.

Cooper kicked off his perch to the left of the Knight, while Chief managed to get off a couple of bursts, before the Knight returned fire and he was forced back into cover. With the Knight’s attention solely on Chief, Cooper rushed it, drawing the Scattershot from his back, and putting a shot into the surprised Knight. In combination with Chief’s earlier shots, the Scattershot broke the Knight’s shield, despite the longer range that Cooper fired from. Chief stood out from his cover while the Knight turned in surprise, and put a burst into its helmet to finish it off.

A moment later, the Watcher exploded as the focused automatic fire from the trio of marines cut it apart in the air.

“Damn man!” Dubbo cheered, jogging over to them and looking at Cooper, “You sure can move!”

Cooper chuckled, and shared a handshake with the man, “I’m not too bad. Jack Cooper,” he introduced.

“Chips Dubbo,” he returned with a grin, “Happened across the Chief did ya?”

“Yeah. Oh, hey BT, made it over alright?” Cooper asked, his focus shifting as he spotted his Titan making his way down to them.

“I faced no major obstacles,” BT responded, quickly striding over to his pilot, before lifting him from the ground and into his cockpit. “Let us continued forward to clear the LZ.”

“You heard the robot!” Dubbo commanded, “Move up marines! Double time!”

The marines ran after Chief and BT, struggling to keep up with their significantly faster pace.

“Chief, it’s Lasky. We’re getting reports of friendlies pinned down near your position. Can you assist?”

“Commander, this is Cortana. We’re on our way.”

The sounds of gunfire quickly became apparent, and soon after, the pinned marines were visible, a cluster of Prometheans beyond their sandbag encampment.

Cooper started firing the 40mm into their forces, quickly eliminating those that posed a threat to the marines, while further still lay beyond.

“Holy fuck! Is that a giant robot?!” screamed a marine, as he turned to look to their saviour.

“And the Master Chief? I thought he was dead!” cried another.

Another cackled, “We’re gonna get out of this boys!”

“God damn!” came the last one, observing BT, “And I thought Mantis’ were tough lookin’ SOBs!”

“Focus marines!” Dubbo commanded, “We’re not outta the woods yet! We gotta get up to that bunker!”

Sure enough, at the top on the small incline sat a Forerunner door, imbedded in the rock. Cooper started pushing up the hill, BT’s large frame and powerful armament keeping the Promethean’s attention, so that the marines could dispatch any remaining foes out of his line of sight.

“Get the Watchers!” Dubbo commanded, noticing a pair of them beginning to bathe 2 areas on opposing side in a blue cone of light. It was the same thing that had summoned a turret earlier, while Chief was still on the underside of the planet.

While Chief focused on picking off those distracted by BT, the marines focused fire on the now stationary Watchers. After a second of concentrated fire, the left one detonated, and they switched targets to the other, destroying it a moment later.

They were slightly too late however, as a turret formed in the ashes of its fallen creator. Before the marines could attempt to destroy it, they were forced back into cover by a barrage of hard light. The turret whirred, rotating to point at BT, the pitch of its whine slowly rising until it began its bombardment.

Cooper reacted quickly as the beam began burning through BT’s shields. He turned on his left heel, left arm coming forward and activating the Vortex shield. The Vortex shield dispersed the attack across its surface, but it was chewing through his power reserves to keep it active. Fortunately, it survived through the bombardment, and Cooper returned fire with the 40mm cannon.

Three hits weren’t enough to put it down, but the cluster of guided rockets were, cutting through it and destroying some Crawlers behind it. Two more shots, and the final Knight fell, and they were free to push up to the marines’ previously held position by the door.

“The marines got trapped trying to get through these doors,” Cortana said, “Look for an interface.”

Chief spotted one easily enough, as to the right of the door, a sole podium stood. He walked towards it, and extracted Cortana’s data chip from his helmet, pushing it into the receiving slot on the interface.

“These doors open into a cave system with a space large enough for an LZ,” Cortana said, before she was cut off by a Knight’s scream, “Hold them off for long enough for me to open the doors!”

The marines quickly dispersed themselves along the encampments of sandbags, collecting ammunition from abandoned weapons and setting themselves up on stationary machine gunmachinegun turrets.

The powerful rotary cannons, BT’s support, and Master Chief’s incredible aim made short work of the Promethean forces before they could even reach an effective firing distance, and before long, Cortana got the doors open, revealing the cave system behind it.

“You go on ahead Chief,” Dubbo directed, “We’ll hold down the fort.”

Cooper managed to get BT’s large chassis into the caves, but it was a tight fit, and he was forced to lie prone and crawl through behind the Chief. Fortunately, with BT’s long limbs, he was able to keep a distant pace behind the Chief, until they reached an open cavern where he was free to stand.

They continued quickly to the marked location, Cooper doing his best to quieten his movement.

“Knight!” Cortana warned as they rounded the corner, “Wait, what’s he doing?”

The Knight stood facing away from them, waving his arms and pointing in various directions.

“The Covenant?” Cooper asked, noticing a cluster of Grunts past the Knight, watching him, and then seemingly following his commands.

“They’re working with the Prometheans?” Cortana asked.

Cooper decided to take the initiative while they were still hidden, and eliminated the Knight with two shots, the Grunts scrambling into a panic as their leader was killed.

They pushed into the clearing, quickly eliminating the Covenant and Promethean forces.

“I’m shocked how quickly the Didact has unified these Covenant,” Cortana admitted as they cleared the last Knight.

It was then that a Phantom lifted over the lip of the cliff and slowly floated into the cave.

Cooper was quick to paint it with the tracker cannon, and fired a quick rocket barrage, to unfortunately small results. He realized that he wouldn’t be able to do sufficient damage to the armoured vehicle with his current methods, and instead activated his Salvo Core.

Pods lifted over both shoulders, each spitting out dozens of laser guided missiles in rapid succession.

The Phantom pilot tried to dodge, but the bulky vehicle wasn’t nearly fast enough, and the rockets began slamming into it. After a couple of seconds, Cooper saw the hull collapse under the assault, and the rockets then started barraging the insides of the vehicle, until a moment later, it detonated with a resounding boom and bright purple flash.

“Cortana to Lasky; LZ secured.”

“RogerRodger that Cortana,” Lasky replied, “I’ll get you the coordinates-“

“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Code Red! Hostile elements are attempting to gain entrance to the Infinity bridge!” Came the Infinity’s captain’s voice.

“They’re outside the hatch! Doors breached! Doors breached!”

“All units return to Infinity immediately! That’s an order!” the captain said.

“Chief,” Lasky began again, “I’m redirecting the Spartan IVs to rally point Alpha Sierra Foxtrot.”

The low whine of an engine could be heard, and they turned to see the approaching friendly dropship. Cooper quickly slipped out of BT, ready to board.

“Until we catch up, you have tactical command of the forward assault force! Rendezvous with those men and take back the ship!” Lasky instructed, the Pelican lowering in a hover, the back doors opening.

“Yes sir,” Chief responded.

“Good luck, Chief. Lasky out.”

Cooper spotted one of the pilots step through the door to meet them.

“Holy!” he exclaimed, quickly spotting BT, “You’re the special cargo? Chief, you board, I’ll get the cargo locked up tight for the trip.”

“Do not worry.” BT told the pilot, “I will be able to hold on to the vehicle by placing my hands and feet here and here.” BT pointed to the locations, and demonstrated by hooking his hands into position.

The pilot nodded, and quickly gestured to them to follow him aboard.

Cooper stepped onto the ship, and couldn’t help wondering just how much longer he would be fighting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The man, the myth, the legend.
> 
> Chips Dubbo is here!
> 
> I know it ain’t canon, but he’s such a great character lol. Sorry this chapter’s a little short, and little late, I’m still getting back into the habit of writing.
> 
> Unfortunately, the poll has shifted a lot, so next chapter won’t be for 4 weeks. Anyway, not mych else from me, so I’ll see you all then!
> 
> Yours sincerely, H3ctic.

**Author's Note:**

> God damn! 8 and a half thousand words! This shit’s crazy!  
I had a lot of fun writing this. Let me know what you think of it! I tried to keep the combat relatively short to keep it interesting, while still showing off both sets of characters.  
Anyway, not sure when the next chapter will be out, this one took me like, a month and a half, but I was focused on my Konosuba! story, so it probably won’t be that long if you guys like it.  
See you in the next chapter!  
Yours sincerely, H3ctic.


End file.
